Mz Kelly B

Easter crafts

2009-04-10T16:19:00.004-04:00

Michelle has some cute templates on her blog for some hybrid crafts. She includes some great tutorials too. I think the little gift bags will be great to use at the end of the school year to throw a few small things in for the boys teachers. Nothing that they can't carry into school either ;)

I'm still not sure of the fate of my lovely blog here, but for now it will stay. I've got a lot of catching up to do after having my SIL and nephew in town visiting for the last week. I wasn't able to get online much, as needless to say I didn't get much housework done. We are tired from all the running around we did so we are taking it easy resting for now. We have a full weekend of Xbox, laundry, misc housecleaning and resting.

{simplifying}

2009-03-24T14:57:00.002-04:00

I have a lot going on in my online world. Too much.

I think that there are some things it's just time to let go of. I've said one thing and done another too many times now. I love having a separate "identity" from my family blog, but it's really unnecessary.

I am in the process of figuring out where I want to go next. I hope you will all visit Everyday-Chaos from now on in case I don't update this anymore.

buy-her giveaway

2009-03-13T14:40:00.002-04:00

Miss-Britt has started a review site called Buy-her. One of her first posts is a giveaway, a toy of the adult kind. I must say without revealing too much information, I'm quite intrigued with this 'toy' and it's lack of resembling all the other battery operated cousins.

*blushing* Hope that wasn't TMI for anyone! lol

i jumped

2009-03-12T15:59:00.003-04:00

So, over the weekend I did it,I bought my domain name. :) I downloaded a Wordpress theme and started tweaking it a bit. The only thing I can't get to work out right yet is the logo part. I don't know why it looks so horrible every time I save it, but it does. I'm going to keep working on it, it won't be 'live' for a while yet because it's just not professional looking at all. I'm hoping to find out that it's my turn on the wait list of Graffitti Chicks.

Now, I need to make a splash page so that when someone might accidentally happen upon my site it's not blank. lol Then onto starting to weed through my photos & decide which ones are the best, so that I can use those in a gallery/portfolio. Of course I still need to call the city/county to find out all the legalities of running a business out of my home. I'm going to be pissed if I find out that I can't run it out of my house. lol I suppose I'll deal with that if it comes down to it. I need to make a check-list (or find one online....anyone???) and just start at the top. Make it a pooint to do 1 thing a day, or 2 if it's easy enough. This weekend I'm hoping to go to Lowe's to get the materials to make a "fake wall" like I saw on Prop Insanity this week. Such a great, simple idea. They also featured this post the other day, these large planters are so cute & everytime I see them used with babies overflowing them I just smile!

It's finally Thursday and I'm so glad that the end of the week is almost here. Today was payday so I was able to pay bills and set aside some money to get some maintenance issues taken care of on the truck & car. Hopefully that will happen tomorrow. On Sunday we celebrate Anthony's 6th birthday. This marks another significant event, 6 years ago Tom went off to war. It's been 6 long years since this all started. Ok now. Onto another subject.

I know you all l.o.v.e. seeing my layouts ;) So, here are a few of my latest ones. I felt pretty creative over the weekend, it helped that on Sunday I could sit and scrap.

Tommy & I in April 2002.

Tommy February 2009

Our first winter in SoCal.

business start-up

2009-03-05T17:01:00.002-05:00

So, I'm going to start researching the costs and paperwork involved with registering a new business. I thought something easy to do right now would be to go ahead and purchase my domain name. Easy enough. Until I went to godaddy.com and find that kellybphotography.com has already been taken. lol Frustrating!

Now what? Use full last name? Use it only for the purpose of obtaining a domain name? I still kind of want something catchy, but with moving around and whatnot I thought that the memorability of my business will come in part with using my name. Plus, who knows where we move next there might already be a photographer (or any business) with the same name. I figured it was less likely to find someone else doing business with my name.

Back to step 1 - decide on business name. lol

latest layout recap

2009-03-05T00:33:00.004-05:00

I'm behind on everything it seems lately. Not too much new has been going on, just normal everyday things. I've gotten quite a few layouts done lately. Mainly due to some templates and scraplifts. I haven't had an original layout idea in my head since before Christmas. I feel like a goober for constantly using templates or lifting people, but I'm getting the layouts done.

I'm happy to say that I applied to Tangie Baxter's creative team and she accepted me! She has some great templates to work with and some great looking kits. To keep this post fairly short, the layout titles will be linked up to my DST gallery if you would like to see credit information.

iHeartFacesKids entry - black and white

2009-02-24T13:31:00.005-05:00

This is my entry to the iHeartFacesKids for week 7. The theme for week 7 is black and white. Thanks to doing the 365 project, I have a handful of b/w photos that I could enter. The ones of my boys fresh out of the tub though are my fav b/w's. This one of Anthony is probably my absolute favorite and the one that inspired me to get as similar shot of the other two.

why you should always check your hair before leaving the house

2009-02-19T17:20:00.003-05:00

...because you never know who will knock on your car window while waiting for the teacher to open the gates for the PM kindergarten class.

lmao

I had been playing with the boys and just threw my hair up in a pony tail after. I usually don't spend much time in front of the mirror, ever. A few minutes each morning to brush my teeth is the norm. Sometimes 10-15 if I blow dry my hair &/or put on make-up. Of course last night I fell asleep without washing my face and hadn't yet washed my face before taking Anthony to school. The whole morning it felt like we were running behind, almost late. So, when I noticed it was time to take Anthony to school we just jumped into the truck. Normally we just sit and wait for a teacher to open the gates and Anthony jumps out and goes into school.

Not today, another mom came up to the truck because she noticed our Michigan plates. I was surprised so I stuttered, nice one Kelly, when she asked if dh was Navy. "No, M-M-Marines," I said to her. Ugh, I'm so smooth. No wonder I don't know anyone around here. lmao Anyway...she wanted to see where we were from in MI because she's from MI too. She seemed nice enough. Her son is in Anthony's class.

Then I must've totally looked like a freaking stalker, because I followed her nearly all the way home. If I hadn't turned on the street I normally do to get to my house it really would have looked like I was following her. lmao I think she lives on the street behind us, at least I think that is where that street goes. lol I just hope I didn't scare her. She looked so neat and put together. Dior sunglasses and pink track suit, and here I was my Simply Vera Wang sunglasses from Kohl's, Gap sweatshirt & black yoga pants from Target.

Almost time to go get the boys from school, so I'm off here to go check myself in the mirror before that happens again. lmao

Happy Birthday Little Man!

2009-02-17T14:20:00.002-05:00

It's little man's birthday today. He's 3! I just can't believe it. The time has gone by so fast. He's grown up so much too, in this last year. I miss him liking to sit with me, now the only thing I'm good for is heating up some chicken nuggets and filling the good ol' cup-cup. Those days are behind us now, he's only going to grow more independent and aware of the world around him.

I spent a lot of time on the computer this weekend. I re-did my weekly 365 layouts. I used the templates I got from Jen Wilson. I hope that she puts out the week titles by themselves, I can't buy more templates. lol I may have to email & suggest it, I wonder if that's ok to do?

I also worked with Amanda Heimann's new kit Truly Yours, you can find it in The Digi Files #2, available now at The Daily Digi. Which, by the way, they have a great tutorial today on making eyes 'pop' in pictures. I even did a layout of Tom for a challenge at The Digi Chick.

I really should remove myself from the computer for a bit. Tend to the birthday boy & clean up the house a bit. We will probably celebrate his birthday tomorrow since we are expecting 2 packages of presents tomorrow. We are foregoing a cake this year and making a trip to Coldstone instead. We would just waste a cake, as much as we all love sweets & chocolate in this house, we just don't usually cut into the cake again after the birthday. We figured by going to Coldstone everyone could get what they wanted & it would all be eaten so no waste. Ok, birthday boy is in meltdown mode...

Happy Valentine's Day

2009-02-14T19:28:00.004-05:00

Hope that you are all feeling loved today :) We had no big plans. The boys opened their goody bags from Grandma and enjoyed a piece of candy. Our cable company is offering 1c pay-per-view movies this weekend so Tom and I thought we would see which ones were available to see. The boys of course decided to play games instead. Right now Tom is out picking up our Chinese food order. It's the first time we've gotten Chinese food here, I really wanted some chicken chop suey, but it doesn't seem to be on the menu anywhere around here.

I'm feeling better, much better than last week, but still tender on my right side. I had to pick up Alex a few times this week and it wasn't easy. We also picked up the last of some birthday gifts for the little man, who will be 3 on Tuesday. I really can't believe that it's been 3 years.

I also managed to work on a couple of layouts over this past week. Two were for Christy Haig, a template designer at Digital Candy. She needed some people to make a few layouts with some of her templates so of course I offered. I love templates, I wouldn't get nearly as much scrapping done if I didn't use them. I really need to go through my scrap supplies though, I have a lot of things that just aren't my style anymore. When I was first starting out I think I downloaded nearly every freebie available. lol

It's almost 6pm and I realize that I should have taken my photo for the day before now. I hate that all of the lights in our house are orange and make my photos look horrible. I'm ok at removing the orange hue sometimes, but alot of times I get really frustrated with it. Like yesterday I just used a b/w action on the photo to make it look halfway decent.

With that, I'm off for tonight...going to play a Scene-It game with the boys or something.

what a {deal}!

2009-02-09T23:09:00.003-05:00

Jen Wilson has her Project 52 items on sale until Tuesday....for 52c each!! Wow! I picked up some things, I'd better start downloading. :) I'm not happy with the templates I have for Project 365, so to try out a few for 52c is a bargain.

DH and I didn't eat dinner earlier since we were full from having sandwiches around 3:30, after our trip to Target. Now, it's 11:45 and we are both kind of hungry. Little man is still up to, go figure - he had about a 20 minute nap in the car on the way home from Target & the deli. I hope he goes to sleep soon. Tomorrow is the first "normal" day on my own. Today the boys didn't have school, so it was ok for just the 4 of us.

It's Sunday

2009-02-08T20:33:00.006-05:00

It's been a pretty boring day around here. I've managed to get 3 loads of laundry done so far; well washed, dried and thrown into the basket. lol I made a really yummy and new to us recipe for breakfast this morning. DH and I saw an episode of Paula Deen the other day where she made this Blueberry Coffee Cake and it looked good. So while we were out yesterday we picked up what we needed to make it. I am so glad that we did, it was sooooo goood!

I managed to install my new OS and not screw anything up. The only thing I think I might've not backed up or made note of is some free 8x8 photobook codes. Oh well though, I might be able to track them down. I love the new OS, it looks so neat and is pretty easy to use so far. It's been really nice to have a clean slate to start with also.

I decided to give our family website one more try. I kept getting the invoice to pay for our host service and finally I just couldn't take it and paid it. lol So, we have one more year to try to make a go of gaining more of an audience for the blog. I know it doesn't help when I don't post, which is why I am going to show Tom how to post so he can write also. I'm going to try to post 2-3 times a week. Since I'm doing the Project 365 that should help, on days there's nothing to say I can just post a photo. Hopefully we'll get some family to pop their heads in and say Hi once in a while. I think my MIL reads it, but we've had no comments (other than some lovely spam) in about a year.

If you haven't noticed I changed the blog look, yet again. I know, I know, I'm sorry. I just can't help myself, I see cute templates and I feel the need to change the look. I wish I had the patience and time to sit down and figure out exactly how I wanted it to look and then figure out how to make it that way. At least with this last template I installed all my sidebar information stayed. I always hate when I change templates and all my sidebar information that I plugged into the widgets is just gone when you hit Save.

Well, I should publish this, it's been sitting here waiting nearly all day. My photo for the day is posted, the kids are sleeping, DH is packed for the field just in case, and he's given himself a fresh haircut. It's almost midnight and my back is killing me.

misc.

2009-02-04T20:35:00.002-05:00

So, when I sat down I wanted to write about a big realization DH and I had since my surgery, but I didn't want to be a downer. So, I'll wait til another day, I've been depressed enough for a few days.

Instead I'm going to do a lot of linking up today. :) Thought that maybe someone else may be interested in some of the things I've found in the past couple days.

So, at The Daily Digi today they have a fabulous paper bag hybrid tutorial.

Darcy Baldwin is having a font contest, I'm thinking about submitting something, I've been wanting my handwriting as a font for a while, no time like the present, right?

I've found a new vampire book series I'm going to be ordering as soon as I have some extra money to do so, it's the Sookie Stackhouse Series.

I love the look of all the layouts I see using Natali Designs, and now I really want her All You Need Is Love kit, it's 20% off too!

The Cooker's Blog has some great recipes and a cute recipe template free for download.

Yesterday I ordered my Mac Box Set, it shipped today! I'm super excited to try out the new OS and be able to get our camcorder movies useable. So I've been organizing, deleting and moving things to my EHD to have everything backed up before the new install.

Since I got the new OS and iLife for my computer I'm considering getting DH this Xbox hard drive. It makes sense for us, we can rent movies through Netflix on our Xbox, the boys have an Xbox that only has a 256 memory unit, so they can use the old HD. The bonus is that it comes with a data transfer kit so that we can pull off our info from the old drive to the new one. I know all too well how proud DH is of his gamerscore. lmao

I've kept up with the Project 365 for the most part. Only 2 days missing, but with the last week and a half we've had I think it's understandable. Tom and the boys took pictures for me for when I was in the hospital and once I got home. Which reminds me, I need to snap a shot for today. Speaking of Project 365, I really want this 365 kit from Gina. It's just too expensive, I can't justify the price right now...though it's packed full of goodies. lol She has a bunch of additional add-ons as well, it'll just break my bank. I have got to figure out a way to get on that creative team. ;) lmao

Well, it's about dinner time, I should wake up the hubby and see if I can attempt to make dinner tonight. I'll leave you with my 365 shot from yesterday...my boys sitting together, reading after homework time. I used the Better Black and White tutorial from The Daily Digi to get the black and white conversion.

being sick {sucks}

2009-02-02T02:23:00.002-05:00

So, I've been out of commission since last Sunday. Saturday was spent with Anthony being sick, I woke up Sunday morning thinking I was getting the stomach flu he had the day before. I stayed upstairs in my room all day. Around 3 I told Tom it was too much, so he called our insurance and asked about the approved urgent cares, etc. So, off we went. Around 4 I was at urgent care, by 6:30 I was in the hospital. Around 10:30 I went into the waiting room to tell my husband and boys that they could go home, without me. They decided to keep me, after an ultrasound it looked like my gall bladder was inflamed & I had gall stones. So, sometime after midnight I got a room, and at 4pm on Monday I was being prepped for surgery. I came home Tuesday. Wednesday Alex was up every 1/2 hour - 40 minutes getting sick. Friday it was Tommy. Yesterday Tom and I didn't feel all that great. Today Tommy doesn't feel all that great again.

I'm hoping they feel well in the morning, I have a dr appointment, and I don't feel comfortable driving on the expressway right now. I can't wait to have these staples removed, they are starting to itch a bit, well one is, I think it's because it's sticking out a bit.

Thankfully Tom was able to take leave to stay home with me while I was recovering. I'm not supposed to lift anything heavier than a gallon of milk for 1 week. So, Alex is far out of the question. lol I'm hoping that they let him come back to work, but not send him to the field. They are doing some training right now with some foreign military and they are supposed to go out on ship sometime this week. I think I can manage daytime stuff as long as I don't need to pick up Alex for a few more days, but I think I'll be tired at night and will need a break. We'll see, if it's bad enough I guess he could take more leave.

Let me tell you though, I felt horrible not being able to hold my baby when he was sick. He's the only one that likes to sit with me when he's sick and he just cried and whined and was miserable. According to Tom they were all upset when they left me at the ER, I saw Alex was upset. It all broke my heart. I sat in the hospital room by myself for most of the day Monday, Tom and the kids came up for a bit and left a bit before my surgery. It sucks not having any family in the area to help in times like this...it reminds me of when I had Anthony and Tom was deployed to Iraq the first time.

Anyways...I shall stop rambling now....got to love the stomach flu!

backing up

2009-01-20T01:39:00.002-05:00

It's been a while since I've done a thorough back up of all my photos and digital supplies. So, that was my intention for this long weekend. I need to get a better system going, I think I say that alot.

Anyway, today I really felt the need to back-up my laptop after I read about the new iLife for Mac. I was totally stoked to see that iMovie now is compatible with our camcorder. I was getting very irritated with trying to find software that I would be able to use to make dvd's with, or just watch our home movies. Because of the frustration we haven't used our camcorder very often. The new iLife is $79. However, I noticed that you need the Leopard OS to run it, which I don't own. So, the Apple website says that they have this package called the Mac Box, for $169 you get Leopard, iLife '09 and iWork '09. I don't really need iWork, but Leopard is $129 and iLife is $79, it's a good deal to me! So, when we get our tax return I'm hoping to order it. So, at this moment, I'm physically moving individual photos from iPhoto to my EHD. I've been having issues with iPhoto sporadically quitting on me anyway, so I was intending on re-installing the software soon.

19 days into Project 365 and I'm keeping up! There have been a couple of days that around 10pm I'm wondering what to take a picture of, but I take one of something. lol I've done a layout for the first 2 weeks. My intention is to do a layout for every week and one layout with tiny pictures for the whole month for a bound book at the end of the year. We'll see how that works out, but for now, that's my plan. I'm quite sure it'll change numerous times as the year goes along and as I see how everyone else is approaching it.

I'm also working on a Summer 2008 album for us and printing a copy for my nephew Jason. He spent a good deal of time with us this summer, so I thought we could just omit a few pages of the book and get him a copy too. I have a code for a free photobook through Shutterfly so I'm trying to figure out pictures and kits to use. I want it to all go together, so it's been hard to try to find a kit that will work with everything, I'm thinking of using 2 or 3 max now since I don't have anything that works for it all, and I don't exactly have the money to spend right now on a new kit.

Anyway...til another time. I'm out for tonight ;)

addictions

2009-01-15T14:14:00.003-05:00

I have a confession to make...well, two really.

I am a smoker and am addicted to Coke. The two best things for my teeth and health. lol

On Tuesday morning I started my day with the idea that I am done smoking. About halfway through my day I also finished my last bit of Coke in the house. Surprisingly, Tuesday wasn't so bad. Wednesday wouldn't have been so bad either, if I didn't have to go up to the school 4 times and listen to Alex whine and cry for no good reason. I was also exhausted. I stuck to it though, I bought a 20oz at the grocery store. I know that I can get through the day without pop, I just choose not to. But, I know that to help me lose weight and be healthier I have to quit drinking so much of it.

My poor hubby received the brunt of it last night, though I have to admit some of the things he said/asked were stupid or I had already explained/answered. lol I do have to keep my emotions in check though, I've snapped at the boys a couple of times and I regret what I said to them. I don't do well under stress, which is why I smoked.

Onto other things...I am current on my 365 project. I've been taking a photo every day, there have been a couple days I haven't been able to get it posted on said day though. It's getting done, 15 days in already. lol Seems like it's been alot longer. I'm going to try to scrap a 2pg layout for each week, or maybe 1pg for each week. I haven't exactly decided yet and am not about to try to tackle it right now. Maybe at the end of the month...

I did do another layout though. I had a great 2pg layout started of our house out here in CA and then my laptop battery died (someone unplugged my computer) and it re-booted...so I lost it all. So, when I feel up to it, I get to attempt it again, re-sizing and placing some 14 photos. Fun!! lol

lists

2009-01-11T17:10:00.002-05:00

I love lists. My problem is I don't usually remember where I put said lists. I have pieces of paper littered all over my house and things end up everywhere. It's been particularly frustrating since we've moved.

Anyway, something I need to add to my to-do list is make a decision on whether or not to renew the family domain name. I love having a self-hosted blog and photo gallery, but I don't enjoy paying for hosting & renewing the domain name when hardly anyone visits our site. I realize I'm not a spectacular writer and my updates are sometimes few and far between, but we have hardly any hits on the site. Maybe I'll renew the domain name another year but not our hosting. Although I just went through and did a fresh install of wordpress and re-organized our categories and made it look neater.

Another thing on my to-do list was to decide on my ability to finish my medical transcription course. Admitting defeat, I called to see what they might be able to do for me. I followed their instructions and wrote a letter to ask for a refund, I just hope that they call me first, because if they are going to offer me a ridiculous amount I will accept their extension offer and bust my ass to finish.

To-do list item #3 is to work out a budget. I have a tenative one written out on paper, but I need to tweak a few things and figure out a way to make it work. I had high hopes of trying the envelope system, but ATM fees would hurt us. So, Tom and I agreed to do an envelope system for the things that we seem to spend more than we need to on: fast food and movies. I have a small amount of money going towards savings each month. I know everyone says to pay yourself first, well, if my bills don't get paid then we'll be in more trouble than paying us first is worth. So, I figured a small amount is better than nothing.

I'm disappointed it's Sunday. Tom got called yesterday to go in today and stand duty for someone who got sick. I was really looking forward to hanging out with Tom and the kids and catching up on some tv shows and playing some Rock Band. lol

first 7 days

2009-01-08T01:18:00.003-05:00

7 whole days into the new year and I'm burnt out already. Today Anthony went to AM kindergarten class and was to be picked up at 12:24, Tommy had a minimum day and needed to be picked up at 1:13. Today I just got Tommy from school at 12:24 with Anthony.

It also marks 7 days that I have taken pictures and posted one a day on my 365 blog. Last year I wasn't able to complete the whole year, I was fighting pretty hard to find the inspiration by March. I'm hoping that this year I can improve my photography skills, work on my post-processing and document our lives with the pictures.

I also finished up 2 more layouts since the last time I posted about scrapbooking. I need to streamline my process and organize my supplies a bit better so that I am more efficient with my time. I have too many hopes for this year, but I'm still bound to not make any resolutions, just make more of an effort to slowly change the things I want to.

So, with that I'm off til tomorrow...I need to get my kitchen cleaned up so I don't wake up to the mess.

in this new year

2009-01-05T03:04:00.002-05:00

I want my kids to play with their friends. They enjoy going to school to have someone else to talk to and interact with besides their brothers and me. When I ask if they have any friends they would like to invite over and they say no. Maybe they don't want to invite anyone over, I get that. What I don't want is for them to be like me and be afraid to talk to people. The fear of initiating a conversation with someone I don't know scares me. I've tried to "put myself out there" before and I've been slapped in the face by people who I thought were going to be friends.

I don't need the drama in my life. Though I don't like the thought of my boys not enjoying their childhood and the time we will be living here because of the way they see I act. I have yet to strike up a conversation with any of the other parents that I've seen. Though they are all standing around in groups and it is horrible intimidating to imagine myself going up to them all and introducing myself. To one person I could maybe force myself to say hi and do introductions, but more than that? It makes my poor heart race, my palms sweat and I want to run back to my bubble that is my home.

I am going to take a small step and make up some cards for Anthony and Tommy to give out to 2 or 3 friends with our address and phone number on them. I hope that will help them start talking to some friends outside of school. Tommy wants to do soccer again, so I am calling tomorrow to see when the last day for registration is because unfortunately we just don't have the money for it right now. I will do something to help my kids make some friends and not have the same anxiety issues that I deal with on a daily basis (sometimes even getting them to/from school is an ordeal for me). I will be a better parent in this aspect, even if it means a trip to the dr to get some pills.

Happy 2009!

2009-01-02T13:12:00.003-05:00

I hope all of you had a wonderful celebration for the new year. Everywhere I go I hear people talking about resolutions, goals, words for the year, etc. I didn't make any new year's resolutions, I've been pretty bad with follow-through this past year, so I didn't want to put any additional pressure on myself. DH and I are trying to quite smoking, together. It's not working out great so far, mainly since neither one of us can say "don't do it" to the other one. I think it might come down to me quitting while he's at work and trying to keep myself from wanting to step outside with him once he's home at night.

The past few days have been pretty uneventful for us. On the 30th we went to the San Diego Zoo. The drive there wasn't bad, until we got about 1/2 mile from the zoo parking lot and we waited for nearly 30 minutes to get off the main road and then into the parking lot. Then, we proceeded to drive around for about 1 hour and 15 minutes while we attempted to find a parking spot. It was ridiculous! When we hit an hour I told DH that we could call it a day and just go home I was so frustrated with it all. We eventually found a spot and made our way into the zoo. We didn't spent much time there because we were kind of cranky and we ran into a lot of really rude people.

Well, gotta run to Wal-Mart for some things. Check out my Project 365 blog for my attempt at doing a photo a day for 2009. I'll post some pictures from the zoo tomorrow hopefully.

the jolly fat man in red

2008-12-25T19:43:00.002-05:00

The jolly, fat man was good to my kids this year. They are spoiled, that is a fact no one can deny. They received presents from us (obviously), their Aunt Jackie and cousin Jason, from Grandma and Papa, Aunt Peggy and from their Great-Grammy and Grampy.

We were awoken by Anthony hitting Tom and telling him, "It's Christmas!" We told them to run and brush their teeth so we could wake up the sick child we call Alex. We all came downstairs and the boys jumped right into sorting presents and tearing into them. We set up the video camera and recorded the tree, which we hope that the boys were in front of for the majority of the time it was on. I haven't played it back yet, so I'm not sure how much good video we got. I took a picture of the tree this morning, but none of the boys opening their presents. I meant to, but about halfway through the present opening ceremony, Alex laid on me with his DS in hand and new DS game. So, I didn't move for a good 20 minutes or so.

It's been a lazy day, almost doesn't feel like Christmas since there isn't anyone to visit or talk to but who's here. Tom's Great Aunt S wanted us to come over today, but we just wanted to be able to stay in our pajamas all day and let the boys play with their new toys. It's cold and rainy too, I'd much rather stay indoors. We are supposed to go over and see her tomorrow.

It's about that time to start all the side dishes for dinner. I have to make a list later of what the boys got and from whom so we can send Thank You cards since we aren't there to thank anyone. Tom is busy playing CoD4, someone from his mom's house is supposed to get on to play with one of the boys. So we'll see how long he hogs the controller. lol

Hope you all had a wonderful holiday!

craziness of the season

2008-12-20T01:18:00.002-05:00

I can't believe that it's been 9 days since I posted last. Where has the time gone?

Hubby arrived home a few days earlier than planned, although he did get stuck there overnight. The driver that was supposed to arrive to get them wasn't allowed through because of a road closure (or the fact that he didn't have chains on his tires, I can't remember). He did get home on Tuesday though, which made us all really happy. Now, if the people at work would give him the same benefits as the other 2 guys that went with him he might have actually been able to be at both boys holiday events at school. Maybe next time.

Our Christmas shopping is done. Well, with the slight exception of some stocking stuffers. Our gifts for family back in MI have been wrapped, packed and shipped out. Now I just cross my fingers and hope that UPS gets them there sometime before Wednesday. Tonight the hubby and I sat in our room and wrapped gifts for the boys. We are all done with what we bought for them. There is still a stack of things to wrap that my grandma had shipped directly to our house though. Our Christmas cards were mailed out as well.

Nothing at all intriguing has happened though. Just waking up to the same stuff day in and day out. The boys are out of school for the holidays though, I'm hoping to take them to the San Diego Zoo. Our landlords gave us free passes and they expire at the end of the month. I bet when the day comes to go the boys won't want to. lol They didn't want to do anything on our drive out to CA. Wish me luck. lol

I did have a chance to get a couple layouts done. I want to try to get some of the big events of this past year scrapped before I forget the details. I suppose if I don't get a chance I should get a journal and write it all out.

Our trip out to AZ.

Anthony playing in the snow in MI.

Anthony's 5th birthday.

Thanksgiving 2008.

Holiday Fun

2008-12-09T23:41:00.006-05:00

I've been on a quest to find a few fun (and inexpensive) things to do with the kids for Christmas. I found some cute food things to make, but how many different kinds of cookies, cupcakes and other sugary goodness does one family need? Though I think we will be trying these cupcakes and maybe these marshmallows.

If I'm brave enough maybe these snowmen cupcakes and chocolate cookies too. They all look sooo good!

I want to make sure that we have things planned to do because normally we go back to MI for the holidays and we have plenty of places to go and things to do. This year, since we just moved and finances are tight we just couldn't swing flying to MI. So we'll be here in SoCal on our own for the first Christmas since Tom and I have been married.

I think Christmas Eve will be our biggest struggle because normally we spend all evening at Tom's uncle's house with his Dad's side of the family. The kids play with their cousin they only see at Christmas, we eat, catch-up with everyone, Santa comes and everyone gets something small from Santa and then more presents from the drawing. It's so much fun and I really wish we could be there for that. I'm not so worried about Christmas day since after presents we'll make some lunch and the kids can play with their new toys. I want to make the few days they have off before Christmas fun and not leave them to be entertained by video games or tv all day.

So I'm stressed to say the least. I know in the end it will all work out.

dirty dishes talk to me

2008-12-08T17:02:00.002-05:00

Damned short term memory problem...I had a blip earlier in the day where I nearly had this whole post written out (in my messed up mind it was all written up), and now....nothing. A big.fat.nothing. Except that I know I had my sudden bout of fabulous blog entry dream seconds after I glanced around my ever-so-dirty kitchen and saw the mounting pile of dirty dishes. They were mocking me. They were talking under their breaths to each other when they saw the sweat beading on my forehead with the thought of getting them all cleaned. They thought they were so smart, the clean cookie sheets jumping into the sink to hang out with the dirty pizza pan. The quesadilla maker resting nonchalantly next to the sink after it had just dumped all of my clean forks into the saucepan with remnants of Prego mushroom pasta sauce in the bottom.

It's all I could do to control myself and not take a sledgehammer to the whole mess. Then that would have meant a bigger mess, and not to mention an explanation to the hubby and the landlord. So that destructive thought slowly drifted out of my head and the wonderful blog entry about it entered. Unfortunately the above mentioned nonsense was not the fabulous post I had envisioned.

I don't know what we're yelling about....

2008-12-07T23:19:00.005-05:00

Anchorman....funny.

Hearing the line from the movie that hubby has as his ringtone...funnier.

Watching everyone look up and look around for hubby when we hear it....priceless.

lol

I finished and ordered our Christmas cards from VistaPrint earlier this week. This is what our card will look like...

The basic design is one of the free cards Michelle Coleman had available from Memory Makers. All I did was change it to fit in VistaPrint's 4x8 template. So, one more holiday preparation I can check off of my rather lengthy to-do list.

Thankfully my list of presents that I still need to buy is slowly getting shorter. For the boxes to our families I just need to get some pictures printed for the cd calendars that I am refilling for my grandparents & a gift card for my brother. Maybe too a 5x7 and 8x10 picture for my grandma & mom, maybe I'll have my grandma pick up a couple of frames so that I don't have to risk having photo frames in a box and getting broken. What a nice Christmas morning, huh? Tag with warning of possible broken glass.

Ah, well it's almost bedtime for the kiddos. I have cookies in the oven that smell wonderful. Too bad I didn't actually mix up the batter myself lol. The Wii Fit is calling my name once the big boys are settled down in bed for the night. Need to keep up with excersizing for a change.

$100 Target Gift Card Giveaway

2008-12-04T11:23:00.002-05:00

I know alot of us could put a $100 gift card to good use. You can find out more information at Give Away Today on how to enter. If you are so inclined - please add me as your referring friend (Kelly Bommarito). Thanks!

photo contest

2008-12-04T01:51:00.002-05:00

So, while not doing anything productive (while the overflowing dishes are calling my name, as well as all the folded laundry chillin' on my bed) this evening I ran across a post on Mommy Always Wins about a photo contest. So, I went on to read how to enter. I'm In Culture Shock says to post a portrait shot that I took, a fairly recent one - hope October is recent enough to be qualified. I'm sure many other way more talented peeps will enter, but I figured what the hell, let's do it!

So, here it is...

So, yeah...that's all for today...

That figures....and Thanksgiving re-cap

2008-12-02T01:18:00.002-05:00

DH is going "out-of-town" for 2 and a half weeks. He's been at work for two weeks today. He was also slotted to go to some Master Gunner school in the beginning of the year. Now they are screwing with him about switching his company. The end of the work week last week someone told him not to worry about switching companies and that he'll stay where he is for a while - not according to someone else today. So, we'll see what happens when he gets back - both the companies that he might go to are deploying at some point next year, so hopefully we'll find out what is going on soon so that we can start to prepare.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Thanksgiving holiday has come and gone as quickly as it snuck up on me. Kathy and her family came down to hang out for the long weekend. They arrived on Wednesday and left on Saturday morning. It was so neat to have us all in the same place. The kids got along like they've known each other forever. We ate a lot of good food, played some games and attempted to take some pictures.

How about some pictures...

The Thanksgiving Day spread.

Another one of the food.

Some yummy sweet potatoes.

The delicious turkey that Kathy slaved over.

All 9 of us.

The best picture of the 4 of them.

Jacob.

Ashely.

Alex had to get in on the action too.

Awww, aren't they cute?!

The only good shot of my boys out of 80.

holiday ideas

2008-11-25T02:39:00.002-05:00

The holidays are rapidly approaching and I've been racking my poor mind trying to think of great gifts for everyone. It's been a bit more difficult this year considering I also have to factor in the shipping. We don't want to only send gift cards though. So, I've been on the look-out for some great, inexpensive gifts.

Something Blue Studios has some great magnets, magnet calendars and even some jewelry that they will add your pictures or art to. The prices seem fair, though I have never ordered from them before, so I can't say how their quality or service is. I'm thinking of ordering some of these flair buttons for our fridge to slip in everyone's stocking.

I've also been thinking about our Christmas cards for this year. I would like to send out photo Christmas cards this year since we won't be able to make it to MI to see everyone. Memory Makers has 3 card sets from Michelle Coleman, so far these are probably my favorite set. Though the ones from Traci Reed are keeping me from making a decision. lol

like i need anymore projects

2008-11-24T13:36:00.003-05:00

I have three boys, you'd think that would be enough to keep me busy. And it is, please don't think that I'm not busy. lol

This past Friday as we went to Wal-Mart for more diapers for the littlest man I decided that I was going to look for some knitting needles and a how-to book. So, off to the craft department we went. Then DH reminded me about my hopeful endeavor of making the boys some sleep pants for Christmas. So, quick stop at the fabric before hitting the yarn and needles. Found some inexpensive but nice enough fabric to try to make one pair of pants. Then it's off to find the pattern I bought because I can't remember how much fabric I needed. Figures.

Long line at the cutting table means there's time to look for the how-to book, yarn and knitting needles. So, 2 sets of needes, 2 skeins of yarn, 1 promising how-to book and 2 2/3 yard of candy cane fabric and we were finally ready to exit the craft department.

Did I mention that I've NEVER knitted before? I've also never followed a sewing pattern before. The closest to sewing I've ever gotten is piecing some blocks together to attempt to make a quilt. I can fix a button, and do a half-assed job at hemming some pj pants for Tommy, but that is the extent of my sewing skills. So, probably after Thanksgiving I am going to attempt to sew together a pair of sleep pants for my oldest. Hopefully they'll resemble something like sleep pants so that I won't be too embarrassed. lol

Of course there's also my hopeful photography business, taking care of the house, the digital scrapbooking, and the medical transcription school. The last isn't going very well, I don't know what I had envisioned when I signed up for it, I knew it wouldn't be a piece of cake by any means, but I think I convinced myself that there was enough time in the day for everything. I really should call and see about possibly getting a refund. It's just too much and I don't think I would be successful in finding a job, I think there are probably way more qualified people out there.

The kids are off school for the week, so I'm off to be mommy. Today we are going to learn how to clean the bathrooms! Yay!!!

Just need to talk to myself for a moment

2008-11-20T20:00:00.004-05:00

I haven't had my allotted chit-chat time today (insert sarcastic tone here - I was on the phone for over an hour with dear Kathy earlier this morning) so I feel the need for a totally incoherent blog post today. *big smile* So, don't mind me, I'm just going to ramble on, maybe talk over some of my other thoughts, and maybe I'll break out into song. Just go about your business, don't mind the crazy lady.

Tommy and Anthony have this thing about bouncing around while they are playing games. No matter what game they are playing, we have to constantly tell them to sit still. When they begin playing the game they are sitting at least 10+ feet from the tv on the couch. As they play and they begin their routine hop-fest they get closer, and closer to the tv. It's not like they can't see the tv, 56" of screen is pretty hard to miss. At this very moment, Tommy is sitting no more than 2 feet away from the tv.

I must've misheard the doctors when my children were born, because I could have sworn that they all told me that the new little being was a boy. They sure look like boys, most of the time they act like boys, but man-o-man, do they ever scream like little girls.

Alex is just a little jabbermouth now. Each day I am amazed at how much better he is getting at communicating what he wants. His vocabulary has probably doubled from 6 months ago. I find it just amazing that I am having what resembles a conversation with the little man.

Kathy asked me to take her family photos when they come for Thanksgiving. Did I mention that she's draggin her husband & two children down here for a long weekend? It was kind of up in the air until the other day, I might've forgotten. I can't wait to have one of my friends come to visit. Usually it's always Tom's friends, or my SIL. We're going to make a ton of food for Thanksgiving, run off taking pictures and maybe head out in the wee hours of the morning on Black Friday to try to catch a good deal or two. Not sure what the deals are looking like this year, so we haven't committed to anything yet.

I've been debating on whether or not it would help if I got a job. That's right, I said it, a j-o-b. It scares the crap out of me to think about going back to work. I haven't worked since March 8th, 2001. I don't have a degree or any training that would make me a good candidate for anything other than customer service in some form or another. I did work at a bank and credit union before having Tommy, I'm not sure though if a 9-5 is something I want to do though. What I would much prefer is to get my photography business moving and take clients on the weekends. I need to get all the info on starting a business in SoCal first. I'm not sure the cost or how much time and paperwork it'll take, first things first.

So, now that you are happier knowing the rambling thoughts that are posessing my mind at the current moment I am going to sit back and wait for the hubs to come home with our food.

I loathe minimum days

2008-11-19T10:53:00.002-05:00

The boys school calls their short, or half, days minimum days. Every Wednesday is a minimum day. Basically all that means is that Tommy gets out of school at 1:13pm instead of 3:22pm. Not a problem for one day a week. We are on day 2 of the minimum days this week due to parent/teacher conferences and it's swiftly kicking my butt.

Here was my schedule yesterday:
8:45am - take Tommy to school
11:45am - take Anthony to school
1:13pm - pick up Tommy from school (walk - so need to leave about 20 min early)
3:22pm - pick up Anthony from school

This morning we need to leave a few minutes early since Anthony's parent/teacher conference is at 8:40am. I'm just hoping that we can find a decent parking spot. It's really a long shot with the parking situation at the school. It's probably the biggest frustration of my day getting the kids to & from school. I loved them taking the school bus.

Just wait until I tell you about the 1st Wednesday of the month's schedule. You want me to go ahead and just tell you now? Ok, if you insist. The first Wednesday of every month the PM kindergarteners go to AM kindergarten. So, on these Wednesdays at least I can say that I'm not at the school 4 times a day like I am for 3 days of this week. I'm cross-eyed just thinking about it.

So, I need to go get the littlest man up & decent for the trip to the school. I should probably take the time to make myself look presentable also. Don't want the teacher to think I just roll out of bed to drop my kids off at school in the morning. What ever would she think?!

{budget}

2008-11-15T00:41:00.002-05:00

I have to shamefully admit that budgeting has never been my forte. Though, all of our bills are paid, in full and on time and we always have what we need. Sometimes we are also able to get ourselves things we want also.

My hardest thing to come to terms with is shopping at places like Target and Wal-Mart. There's just such a variety of "stuff" there that it's easy to become tempted to let it slide into your cart. I also have this inability to say "no" to the hubby. I feel like I've let him down somehow if I tell him that we can't buy something that he wants. It's his paycheck. Especially if it's the new movie of the week, we can surely swing $16 to make him happy. We've cut our movie spending down greatly. I've been struggling with all of this for a few months now, especially knowing that our rent in CA is slightly higher than our housing allowance, and our utility cost will more than likely be higher due to the rates out here.

I have commited myself to thoroughly diving into our finances and making a plan to implement come January 1st. I need time to get it all sorted through, then to present it to the hubby. He has no idea how much we pay for things or how much his paycheck it and I'm irritated when he seems to think that there is always money in the account.

Anyway, I should end this post considering it's almost 5pm on Saturday and I started this around 11pm on Friday. This is my second goal for the new year; the first is to quit smoking, again.

playing catch up & some pictures

2008-11-14T02:53:00.002-05:00

I hate playing catch up from being out of town.

The mountain of dirty clothing that was lurking in my laundry room is almost all gone. I have a working dishwasher now. Alex's room no longer looks to be in limbo, the stacks of clothing have disappeared, the bed resembles a place one could sleep and random things won't fall out of the closet when you slide open the doors. Our living room is also in a much better state now. It no longer resembles a war zone of cardboard and packing paper.

My garage still resembles a storage unit unfortunately. The reason the house still looks like we just received our stuff is because my dear Tom likes to sit and play Saints Row 2 and while he wastes his time away playing video games, I sit on my ever expanding butt and surf the 'net. I find interesting sites here and there, open a new tab...continue surfing and find some great blogs, bookmark...and on and on.

Ah, well....I'll post a few pictures from the weekend. Then I'm removing myself from the couch and hoping that there isn't an imprint from my butt in the cushion when I finally stand up. lol

Alright, that took longer than I anticipated. I wish more of the photos had turned out, oh well, I was having much more fun watching everyone have a good time and having a good time myself to dwell on making sure all my shots were great. I still wonder about this whole professional photographer thing - I really want to do it, I just don't think I can put myself out there enough to do that. Besides my editing skills are really lacking as is any idea of how to go about getting a business started. Wonder if I can run a business out of my house?

Dancing Machine Alex

2008-11-13T01:05:00.002-05:00

This past Thursday we headed out of town to Phoenix for Tom's cousin's wedding. It was nice to see DH's family again. Things were a bit disorganized as far as who was going where, when, but it all worked out in the end. The wedding was so beautiful, Jason and Amy looked so happy. Alex did his job as ring bearer as best as a 2 year old could do.

At the reception Alex really was the star of the night. He danced and danced. He had such a good time and was the last one standing on the dance floor. Jason spun him around on his butt on the dance floor and that was when Alex was introduced to the art of break-dancing. lol It was so cute to watch him spin around. He even ran from off the dance floor, onto the floor and slid on his knees. The whole night I wished I had thought to bring our video camera. Though, in my defense, I really thought I would end up bringing a cranky 2 year old back up to the hotel room around 8pm.

The older two didn't have nearly as good of a time, but all they wanted to do was sit at the table. So many different people drug them onto the dance floor to try to get them to entertain the idea of dancing, but they weren't having it.

I have a lot to catch up on since we were away for the weekend. I've got CT requirements that need to be met, an extra-ordinary amount of laundry lurking in my laundry room and more boxes that still need to be unpacked. I also have the best of intentions of writing out the gritty details of our drive from VA to CA. I know that soon I will forget some of them, so I want to get them written down somewhere before I forget the experience.

I really should run, our trusty Home Depot appliance delivery guy is here. This is his third trip to our house, and hopefully his last. The dishwasher is being installed as well as our new, energy efficent washing machine. So now I have to list the washer & dryer set on Craigs List to try to help offset the cost of our new set. Oh the joys of moving!

1st Day of school in CA

2008-11-03T21:36:00.003-05:00

Tommy and Anthony had their first day of class at their new school today. We arrived early to find their classrooms and talk with Tommy's teacher. I knew he'd be ok, he's pretty resilient. I was worried about Anthony. His first year of school, going from all day to half day and the fact that he was just getting over being upset in the mornings as he got on the bus. He keeps hoping that there will be a bus #85 for him at his new school. lol

Tommy went to school just before 9. The 4 of us headed home for some building time. The boys have a new-to-them bunk bed set, courtesy of my good friend Tiff. It went up with no problems and now their room looks like a room instead of it resembling a home with squatters. lmao At about 11:35 Anthony and I made the drive to school. He said he was going to miss me (awwww!) and I reminded him that he would be gone 1/2 the amount of time he was used to. He reluctantly gave me a hug once his teacher explained the outside play rules and went off to play.

Fast forward through our pretty dull afternoon to 2:45 and we set out for an afternoon walk to get the boys from school. Thankfully it only took us 15 minutes even with allowing Alex to walk at his own pace for the first few minutes. Once he went into his stroller and Tom started playing games with it he had a blast. The walk back took a little longer, obviously, but it was nice.

'Til tomorrow...

Settling In...

2008-10-29T21:08:00.002-04:00

We've been busy the past few days making arrangements for things, finding furniture, finding appliances and getting the boys enrolled in school. We've had some down time, but we find ourselves needing to entertain the boys shortly after we think it's time to relax.

To help entertain them we brought our Monopoly Here & Now game with us. We are able to set it up on the island and we can usually play for 15 minutes or so. Tommy could play for hours and we feel horrible every time we want to take a break. While checking out the Wal-Mart near our house Tom spotted the Pictureka! game on a shelf. The boys had seen a commercial for this before we moved and we said that we would consider purchasing it after we arrived in CA. That is exactly what we did. We broke it open (and Tommy literally broke the top to the box by jumping on the couch lol) last night and played a couple of rounds. It's a good game for kids their age. What's especially nice about it is if you have a few younger players who aren't able to read (or understand the mission cards) you can just do the blue cards where everyone can play every turn. The first person to 6 cards wins! Of course you can adjust the number of cards to win if needed. The hardest part was keeping the dice away from Alex and keep him from messing with the game tiles. lol

Our stuff arrives tomorrow though! I am so excited and can't wait to see if this place feels more like home than the last. Our gas dryer arrives on Friday and I'm stoked. lmao It's silly I know, but after going to the laundry mat we spotted on our excursion to Target the other day I cherish having the convience of having a washer and dryer at my own home.

I need to get dinner started though, so I'm off for the night. I've got some pictures from the trip and the house loaded up. I'll link up or post tomorrow...hopefully.

We have arrived!

2008-10-26T11:41:00.001-04:00

Wanted to update fast. Here's a bit I posted on the family blog yesterday.

I am aiming to update with day-by-day action here soon.

On the move..

2008-10-17T22:40:00.002-04:00

Don't have time to re-write a whole post at the moment. I'm so tired I could have been sleeping 2 hours ago.

Find out how things are going here.

Digi-Dare #104

2008-10-13T19:12:00.003-04:00

I was finally able to do a layout for the digi-dares. You can find this weeks challenge here.

Getting down to the last details of the move. Of course, as luck would have it, I have a horrible runny nose and have been sneezing up a storm. I'm not sure whether it's allergies or a cold, either way I'm miserable.

Last Sunday in VA

2008-10-12T22:25:00.002-04:00

So, it's our last weekend in VA. I had wanted to be able to go out and do something fun, but in the end our procrastination got the best of us and we spent alot of time sorting, organizing and cleaning. The house is by no means ready, but alot of it will have to be done after the house is packed up. It's weird to know that by this time next week we'll be on the road but everything we own is still sitting out like we'll be here in a month.

We have some errands to do tomorrow and hopefully we won't have to run out for anything else. Tomorrow we are also going to take down all the curtains upstairs. I need to finish up (or rather keep up with) the laundry. Alex has a bag all packed up. Tom has his dress clothes and Alpha's ready to go, I have my dress clothes packed. After we run out tomorrow I think I'm going to be able to pack up most of my bag.

Ah, nonsense to all of you I'm sure. It's all just randomness that is running through my mind right now. I did get a layout done today, will try to get the preview saved tomorrow and get it posted. It's the first one I've done in about 2 weeks. Tom and I have been organizing our music and making up playlists for the car ride. We asked the boys if they wanted to go to Graceland and they said they didn't know who Elvis was! So we went on a YouTube search for Elvis clips and finding songs in iTunes.

Well, it's about time I remove my butt from the couch and finish cleaning off my bed so that I can drag my tired butt in there later.

Less than one week

2008-10-10T23:21:00.003-04:00

That's right, less than ONE week until we move. As I look around my house I see nothing but chaos. The older boys are getting impatient that we keep putting off doing things with them because there's still just so much left to do. Tomorrow we have promised time after lunch to sit and play a board game or cards with them.

The window on the truck broke again, so Tom spent an hour or so fixing it. The boys helped me clear out the 3 rooms in the basement. Most of the stuff that was in there is still in the main area of the basement, but some of it made its way upstairs. We have to figure out how much stuff we are going to be able to fit in Tom's car so we can fine tune our list of things we are bringing with us. Now it's just down to the little details, cleaning, organizing (what we can without fear of the packers destroying our progress) and throwing away/donating what we don't need.

There was a going-away party for Tom today at Chili's. We walked in and I thought it was just 3-4 tables...I was wrong. There were guys at every table up and down one whole side of the restaurant. Our table had a big bunch of balloons wrapped around a special present from Mark, a handle of Southern Comfort. They also gave him a plaque with an alligator head on it, all the guys signed the back. It was neat to read some of the things that were written to him. I hope that Tom will work with some of these guys again, others can stay here. lol

Ok, it's late and if I'm going to get up and moving in the morning I should head to bed.

If it's not one thing, it's a broken truck window...

2008-10-06T20:50:00.002-04:00

So, the title should tell it all. To make a semi-long story short, we just saved ourselves $489 today. Our rear, passenger window stopped working yesterday on our way back from the store. We spent a couple hours outside trying to see what the problem was, in the end we figured it needed to be looked at by professionals.

This morning Tom dropped off the truck & AA came back to him with a quote of $575 plus $40 for the diagnostic fee. It was a bit much, but we figured it needed to be done and that was fine. I sent my brother, Kyle, a message letting him know what was going on. He wrote back telling us we were being screwed. Thanks. lol So, he suggested calling around for prices on the parts. So we did and found that we could get the motor for $135 from the Ford dealership when AA was charging us $210 or more. Then we called 4 or 5 salvage yards and one of them had the parts we were looking for and it would only cost us $125.

So we jumped into the truck to buy it. After we got there Tom saw that they also offered a military discount. So, we got almost the parts we needed, including a door handle and a 6x9 speaker for $111. Tom was going to take the truck to work tomorrow because we don't have a star screwdriver. So we took care of sorting through some clothes and closets and made some phone calls. Tom called Eric to offer him some clothes and he said he would come by to pick them up. He came by and brought his star screwdriver set and offered to help Tom try to get the motor in the door.

Almost 4 hours later and it's done! It's fixed and after a little WD-40, opening and closing just fine. What's odd is that the cable inside was all chewed up, so I wonder how it got that way, did something shift in the motor? Anyway, it doesn't matter much as it's fixed now and will hopefully stay that way.

Also, someone from the moving (or packing company) called tonight to schedule a walk-through tomorrow at 10am. So it looks like our pack up and move out days are good. We sold our elliptical on Saturday, now we need to get rid of the entertainment armoire in the boys room, 2 gamecubes, a box full of VHS tapes, and the infant seat and stroller combo. It's a start and before we know it, we'll probably end up having to just set the stuff at the curb or drop it off to Goodwill.

{Jackpot!}

2008-10-03T17:57:00.003-04:00

Funny how a little bit of shopping can make me feel a bit better. lol I probably shouldn't have, but I took advantage of Shabby Pickle's $1 day today. Kits, alphas, elements, 4 pages worth of goodies for $1 each. I limited myself there to just a couple dollars. Then The Lily-Pad put out their BYOC for the month of October. There are so many new things, so I went a bit overboard there. I figure I'll even out for the month when I don't have consistent internet access for a couple of weeks. lol

Now, if only I could get motivated to get the rest of my lengthy to-do list completed. It's 2 weeks from today and our house will all be packed into boxes and onto a moving truck. 2 weeks from today the boys will say good-bye to their teachers and classmates. I'm having a hard time figuring out what I need to pack ourselves and bring in the car. I'm really trying to limit it to a few things for entertainment for the kids, our pictures and scrapbooks, and of course, some clothes. Then I remember the teapot of my great-grandmother's, the crystal glasses from my other great-grandmother, and various other sentimental items that can't be replaced. I think we'll be ok to let the movers pack the crystal and the teapot, but I think I might try to get it in the car if there's room. Like it's going to be that necessary to have those when we move and are without everything else, at least we'll have a pretty teapot and some crystal glasses! lmao

Almost dinner time so I should get something started. I'm hoping to get the desktop cleaned up and backed up this weekend. Then I can stash away the external hard drives. Any little thing to keep it moving, right?

Happy October!

2008-10-01T08:43:00.002-04:00

So, it's October 1st already. Why does it seem that there is still so much left to do before we move? More than likely that nagging, suspicious fear of things left undone is because there is still more than enough left to do. Almost enough to say that it would be fair to assume that I shouldn't be spending any time sitting in front of the computer today until it's completed.

Funny how I'm still here..... :)

I did make a hotel reservation for Oct 17th. Tom also picked up the 2 new DS games for the trip to CA. I began our shopping list of things we need for the drive and something new seems to crop up every 5 minutes or so.

Another problem I'm having is the ever-growing list/pile of items I feel necessary to bring with us. I am so paranoid that the movers will damage or lose something that I want to bring everything that means something. Right after this anxiety attack I put things in perspective and remember that us all being together is much more important than anything I think necessary to cram into the truck with us. Ah, but don't mistake my sudden wake up call for letting go of control of it all...There are definite dealbreakers. While I would love to bring all of our framed photos I know that is just not possibe, neither is bringing all of our shot glasses. Funny, funny, I know. I remember how upset we both were when Tom's gold-leaf shot glass from New Orleans fell from it's shelf and shattered just after Hurricane Katrina. He was down there during Mardi Gras in 2002 and had a great time. I wish I could say that the memories will live forever, but for my dear husband, it's hit or miss. He probably couldn't tell you when he went or for how long if anyone asked him. He'll remember almost missing curfew and being stuck in the bathroom because he was puking. lol

Off to waste time searching for new songs for our road trip...Maybe a new song for my myspace, check on our Amazon order. Yeah, I know I should be placing online orders so close to the move...but hubby needed a new bluetooth headeset and Amazon was a lot cheaper than Best Buy and we get free 2-day shipping. Then I ordered a new wireless remote for my camera and 2 4gb memory cards. The price shocked me because I hadn't intended on purchasing new memory cards, but they have a $45 mail-in rebate. Check it out at Adorama...they have a deal on 8gb CF cards and one on a SD card also.

Ok, ok....I'm outta here --

Countdown...19 days

2008-09-29T20:33:00.002-04:00

That's right, we will be moving in 19 days.

Today I spent most of the morning making phone calls having utilities turned on and off. All I have left is to call Verizon and have them cancel our service. Tom has to call U-Haul back and reserve a car hauler since that is what we finally decided on (until tomorrow). We even have a California phone number scheduled to be turned on on the 24th!

The ceiling fan in the master bedroom decided that it wanted to be a PITA, on Saturday morning. By PITA I mean popping noises, sparks and suddenly ceasing to turn. So we had to run to Home Depot today to get a new one, we also cut a new piece out of the wall from upstairs, because why would the "white" paint in the house all match? Crazy talk I tell ya. Nothing can be easy for us at this point. lol

We have quite a few small details to work out still about the move. I wish the small details didn't matter, but they do. For instance, finding a hotel in the area for the night of the 17th that accepts pets. Luckily so far I've found 2 and will check the hotel on base tomorrow. Hopefully things will start to fall into place and we can start to feel a little better. As of right now we still aren't sure if TMO is going to change our pack up and move out dates, we won't know until the end of the week. *note to self -- add to to-do list* Such a process. Hopefully things will go fairly smoothly for us soon. We've dealt with enough for a while I think, can we have a break, please?

Infectious Laughter

2008-09-26T10:13:00.002-04:00

Alex has the best laugh. I wish I could capture it on video or sound recording each and every time he busts out with a giggle. Sometimes it's an honest-to-goodness laugh, other times it's a fake laugh that leads to a real laugh because he's so amused with himself.

He just did this as I got him a cup with a straw and proceeded to pour him milk. He said no as I started pouring it into his cup. So I asked him if he wanted chocolate and what kid would deny chocolate milk? lol He happily said yes, and as I pour the chocolate syrup into his cup he squealed and giggled. The look on his face was sheer joy and I wish I had had my camera or the video camera to capture the delight on his face and in his laugh.

He also finds it highly amusing when I "blow out" the gameboy advance games. Sometimes when we put them into the DS they aren't always recognized right away, so we have to take it out and blow out any dirt that might be in there. He laughs at me each and everytime I do that.

If only he was this cute & adorable all the time. ;)

Autumn Blossoms

2008-09-25T20:07:00.003-04:00

A new collab from Amanda Heimann & Pineapple Plantation Designs is available at The Digi Chick today and it's 20% off today only! For good measure, here's my latest layout using Autumn Blossoms (plus a few other things), click for full credits.

Are you wearing the same

2008-09-24T08:44:00.002-04:00

thing you had on yesterday?????

Was what was heard in my house this morning, not once, but twice.

lol Anthony fell asleep on the couch last night after eating dinner so I threw him in bed in what he was wearing. He came downstairs in the exact same thing he wore all day yesterday. Then I took a closer look at Tommy. I knew he was wearing the same shorts, kind of hard to disguise the blue plaid shorts. A second and third glance at his shirt told me he was wearing the exact same thing as yesterday also! lol I tried to be nice about it, but Tommy had hurt feelings over it.

I meant to get my camera this morning when I woke them up, I was contemplating doing a layout about our morning routine. Maybe stealing the idea from this layout by Ali Edwards. Plus I need to get my camera out more often, it's just awkward with the dog and Alex never wants to cooperate. lol I'm trying to research getting a new P&S camera for the trip to CA. I don't really want to spend the money, but there are times that I wished that I didn't have to lug around my big camera.

I ordered two calendars this morning for Christmas presents, it cost me a bit more than I wanted, but I was able to pull it altogether through iPhoto and it looked nice. I was able to put 7 photos on a page, some pages had less. Total cost after shipping/fees for one 13 x 10.4" calendar was $25.98. I had to place 2 orders since I add more photos that include J in the one for my MIL. I hope they turn out nice. Then all I have to finish working on is the cd calendars for my Grandma & Grandpa. I'd like to get a photo calendar for my house, but I think I'm going to do my fav photos from the year so maybe I'll order one in December.

On a roll though...if only getting the car situation figured out was this easy, or cleaning my house. hahaha

Monday ramblings

2008-09-20T20:03:00.002-04:00

Cute altered notebook idea here on The DigiChick's blog.

A cute sweater that I have my eye on from AE. They are also buy one get one 50% off. Tempting, although I really don't need to be spending $50 on a sweater right now.

Looking for quotes on shipping DH's car to CA has been a headache. I lost the email quote that one company sent me a few weeks ago that was by far the cheapest, but I need to find out if that included taxes & fees. It would figure that is disappeared. DH's been emailing me quotes on & off throughout the afternoon.

I called our bank to see about a personal loan if we end up needing to sell DH's car and we, of course, owe more than it's worth. The countdown to moving is going faster so we need to finalize alot of the little details before we have no internet service and all our stuff is packed up. I need to make a list of things to call on and get set-up for disconnection.

Rambling...again...lol One thing off my mind is that I was able to get through to the new school for the boys & the lady Stephaine was so nice and helpful. I have a list of things we need and thankfully the only thing we have to go out of our way to get is a copy of Anthony's physical. He's already had one though, so it's just a matter of getting a copy. It looks like Anthony will be going to half day kindergarten once we move. I do need to call and double check on when they are due for their next teeth cleaning, I want to get that done before we move.

Ok, ok...going to go now. Start making me some lists.

Thinking ahead to the holidays

2008-09-19T08:35:00.002-04:00

I'm amazed at how quickly the holiday season is creeping up on me. I know that it's still a few months away, but with a big move in a month it's really putting a kink in my shopping. I was hoping to have some things taken care of before we move, but I can't justify getting anything right now and having it get "lost" in the move.

This will be our first Christmas away from family. I'm not sure what we are going to do yet. Tom's cousin J lives within 6 hours of us, but I kind of want to have it at our house for a change and take a break from driving all over. We haven't really talked about it, so we'll see when it gets closer.

For Thanksgiving I think we will be having the Lewis' over for the day. Kathy is going to cook a turkey because she doesn't like my idea of crockpotting a couple of roaster turkeys. lol I'm hoping to have some money to go shopping with the day after Thanksgiving. There are plenty of places to go shopping at in Temecula so I'm hoping to be able to knock everything out in one day. Minus the calendars that I'm hoping to have at least designed up before we move. I think there will be quite a few gift cards purchased this Christmas to reduce the postage cost.

I don't know why I got all wrapped up in the holiday thinking this morning, I must've heard/read something online about Christmas. Just got me thinking about our move and the holidays.

More landlord woes

2008-09-18T15:30:00.003-04:00

I am really grateful that our move to CA will enable us to not have to deal with Mr. Landlord anymore. I am beyond ready to be done with all the crap that comes along with renting from him. I'm hoping that our new landord is better and has had some prior experience renting out his property before. Although, his cashing of the post-dated check makes me wonder, he's lucky the money was there. That's beside the point, back to the current Landlord troubles. He scheduled a company to come clean out the duct work yesterday. Their window was 9-11 and it was supposed to take hours, up to 5. Well, no one showed. Mr Landlord called to double check someone showed around 10:30 or so. Then at about 12:30 he called to tell us they were about 10 minutes out. Great, by this time their 5 hour timeframe was going to push them into the beginning of Tommy's soccer practice. They showed, sat in the driveway, and continued to sit. I hate when people do that, I'm usually here by myself with one or more of the kids and it just gives me an eery feeling. Then Mr Landlord calls to tell us that the company told the service people only to clean the outside unit, so they can't do the duct cleaning, they didn't have what they needed. Wonderful.

It didn't help any that when I took the kids outside that morning to wait for the bus that I suddenly had a nausea attack and my stomach felt like someone had punched me multiple times. I thought it would pass, unfortunately it didn't and I ended up puking into the bushes. Thankfully the boys bus driver is the best, so when the boys just waited at the end of the driveway instead of their normal stop at the corner, she stopped to get them anyway. Tom ended up coming home because of the duct cleaning, so that I could not deal with it since I didn't feel well. I slept on and off throughout the day, but the appointment wasn't held.

They re-scheduled for Friday, let's hope the service people get the right instructions and bring the appropriate equipment this time. I'm really tired of waiting for people to show up.

On a better note, Tuesday when Anthony came home he had a note from his teacher. It was notifying us that they had nominated him for Student of the Month for September. They are having a breakfast for them on Sept 26th. Hopefully Tom won't have any issue getting off work to go. They only allow adults to attend and I don't know anyone who will watch Alex for me. It's a treat for Dad to be able to show up when he can, so he'll go this time.

A nice little visit

2008-09-16T10:43:00.002-04:00

Sam and her kids stopped by overnight last night. They are headed from her parents house in NY to NC. Chris comes home in another month or so and they are having a house built so she is anxiously awaiting getting her hot little hands on those keys. lol I wouldn't blame her at all, it's nice to have a place to call your own.

The garage guy actually made it by today. We were told not to open the garage door anymore because of where it's rotting is where all the springs and pressure it. The guy said basically we were in the worst situation to be in. It's going to cost $650 for a new panel. He suggested buying a new door, but obviously it's up to Mr Landlord. So, this ought to be interesting to see what he's going to do. Oh and tomorrow the people to clean out the ducts will be here from 9-12 for 5 hours! He didn't even ask if it was ok with my schedule. Which is funny, because tomorrow was the one day I was going to head to the store. Alex and I haven't had the privilege of a store trip by ourselves yet, so I thought we would run to Target and pick up the baby gift for M & M.

That's all from me today, I'm feeling lazy so after lunch I think it'd be a good time for a movie.

FOB2Y 9/11

2008-09-14T22:07:00.001-04:00

For the blog challenge at SSD this week. I'm a few days late for it, but at least I remembered this week. :)

You Are 70% Real

You know who you are, and you're pretty darn comfortable with yourself.

Like everyone, you struggle with the parts of yourself that aren't so great...

But you're good at accepting who you are and not dwelling on your faults.

As a result, you're confident, optimistic, and very real.

How Real Are You?

Paint, Soccer and other misc things

2008-09-13T19:18:00.002-04:00

So, after trying a handful of times to blindly buy paint to cover up Alex's lovely artwork we gave up. Tom grabbed a box cutter after Mr Landlord wouldn't give us any suggestions or guidance about what color paint to buy and cut out a part of the wall. That was interesting.

Tommy had soccer pictures this morning. I felt bad but I didn't buy individual photos, I did get him a copy of their team picture. I told him that I would take some pictures of him and then we'll email them off and later when we have some extra cash we'll get some prints done. After his pictures we stopped at Wal-Mart to grab some stuff, then off to his soccer game. After the game we had to stop by Lowe's to get paint and spackle. Unfortunately, the employees at the paint counter weren't interested in helping us, when they finally acknowledged that we were breathing & waiting for some help the little color matching machine didn't want to work.

So, off to Home Depot we went, Tom was in and out of there with a matched gallon of paint, spackle, and sandpaper in much less time than we were in Lowe's. A quick stop by Giant for some groceries and then we came home. We arrived home to see that Mr Landlord left our garage door totally open while he left and ran to Home Depot. Tom has thousands of dollars worth of gear in the garage; I was beyond pissed.

Thankfully the paint matches and we are set for the weekend. Tom just got back from a quick run to the gas station on base for some more Peach Schnapps and orange juice for my yummy calypso coolers that I have fallen in love with.

So, I'm off to enjoy the cooler air and thunder and a nice refreshing drink. Here are a couple of pictures from our week.

Anthony watching the soccer game

Alex asleep on the couch with the gameboy

Tommy at his game during a break on Sat.

what a {bad} morning

2008-09-10T23:20:00.000-04:00

Ugh, I hate mornings like this. The ones where you wake up in a panic, don't know what exactly is going on, but know that something is wrong. That was my morning.

Normally we wake up at 7:10 for school. Well I was awoken by Anthony at about 8:35 telling me that Mr Landlord was here. What?! I flew out of bed, grabbed my sweater because of course I had been sleeping, so I had my sleep shorts on and a tank top with no bra. lol I flew downstairs as the phone starts ringing. I get the alarm turned off and open the door to Mr Landlord standing there, I must've looked absolutely freaking awesome. He wanted to know if it was ok that the a/c guy was ok to come out in a half hour rather than the time frame of 10-2 that they gave us yesterday. I tell him that's fine. I run inside & immediately get on the boys cases about why they didn't wake me up. I checked my cell phone to see why I didn't wake up to my alarm, well, it was probably because my phone died in the middle of the night. Wonderful.

So, it's almost 1 and I'm really feeling overwhelmed and edgy since I had a bad start to my morning. The a/c guy said that the whole system really needs to be replaced due to the age and efficiency of it. It'll cost $1300 to get the system replaced or $600 for him to come out again and clean what he can. I knew there was something wrong with the system, there just had to be. Now Mr Landlord is saying the guy told him he adjusted it so it'd be working better, etc and to let him know how it is. Of course it's a nice, coolish day today with no real need for the a/c to be running.

This is so our luck.

Rain, rain

2008-09-06T22:03:00.002-04:00

Tommy's soccer game was canceled due to all the rain we got from Hanna. His playdate with L was also canceled, I guess she had wanted to have a picnic, so they will try next weekend.

We ran out to the store today and of course the commissary was super busy, doesn't help that they were running the case lot sale this weekend. Thankfully we only needed a handful of things and got done fairly quickly; going there give me a panic attack.

We've successfully sold our large Fisher-Price toybox and Hummer Power Wheel on Craigslist in the past week. Now for the stroller & car seat. I also have a few things that I need to get listed on ebay, a couple of I Love Lucy barbies, my old iPod and some video games.

I finished this layout yesterday. It took a while to figure out the look I wanted, I changed the layouts to black and white, but struggled with out to set it up on the page. Then I came across Nikki's Stripped template and I immediately knew that was it. So, using Amanda & Melissa's Autumn Pop kit and a few other goodies, I have another cute layout of my favorite middle man. :)

I'm also a guest for Karah Fredricks this month. I love her stuff, I have an overflowing folder full of her stuff. I wish I had some motivation to scrap though! lol The layout I just did took me all day to get the way I wanted it - and I used a template! lol Maybe tomorrow. I've got to knock some things out though...near the end of the month I'll be busier and might not get a chance to just sit & scrap.

mommy...mommy...mommy!

2008-09-05T11:19:00.004-04:00

So, this is what I hear alot from Alex lately. I don't know where he picked up the Mommy part of it, I usually refer to myself as Mom to the boys. The boys have never called me anything but Mom. I'm trying to figure out how well he likes being the only one at home, but I think the change is still too new or him. I was hoping to be close to a routine by the end of the week, but it's not happening. I was soo tired this morning that I went back to bed til I hear a little voice coming up the stairs yelling, "Mommy! Mommy!" lol

I looked at Tommy's soccer schedule yesterday when Tom got home and realized that he has games 2x a week for 2-3 weeks along with practices 2x a week. There is a week or two at the end of the month that there isn't even a game on Saturday. It's really odd how they have done the game schedule. Tomorrow is his first game and I forgot to ask his coach which jersey he's supposed to wear. lol

Well, I need to go get started on the mess in the toy room. I have a horrible mess waiting for me in the computer room. It almost makes me sick each time I see it. lol

And just for kicks, a video of Alex...He didn't like it when I tried to give him the lightning bug. It's a video from my SIL's cell phone, so it's not great quality.

{soccer mom}

2008-09-03T21:55:00.003-04:00

So tonight I took Tommy to his first soccer practice. Since the bus was running a little late I had him change right away when he got home and we ran out to run a couple errands beforehand. We ran into a slight snag trying to find the soccer field; note to coaches, if the practice field is at an elementary school, say so - not everyone might know what B means. lol Tommy had a good first practice, his first game is scheduled for Saturday.

Anthony and Alex played on the playground equipment and got really dirty. It was great for Alex though, he got to be outside and play. Once we got home it was a quick dinner of quesadillas and then upstairs to get cleaned up and pj's on. Now it's 10pm and I am ready to hop in the shower and get to bed. Alex has other plans though.

Here are a couple pics from this evening, it was a bit of a pain to try to take pictures and chase after Alex.

Action shot

Alex was really dirty

1st day of '08-'09 school year

2008-09-02T09:23:00.002-04:00

My boys left a little under an hour ago to go to their first day of school. They'll be gone until just about 4pm. The littlest man of the house is still sleeping. I took some pictures, they aren't great, maybe tomorrow morning we'll try again. Tom stayed home to see them off on the bus, it was weird to see the 2 of them get on the bus. Anthony didn't seem bothered one bit this morning which is a relief for me. I was really afraid that he would go into a meltdown while getting dressed, putting his shoes on or getting on the bus. No meltdowns this morning, which makes me happy.

1st day of 2nd grade

1st day of Kindergarten

1st day of 08-09 school year

Walking to the bus stop

Waiting at the bus stop

After the boys left for school and Tom left for work I got my pretty, new, inscribed iPod and got on the elliptical. Baby steps, I did 1/2 mile in just under 12 minutes. By the end of the week I'm hoping to be up to 3/4 mile. I am determined to try to take off 5-10 pounds by the time we move. Hopefully the hubby will be helpful in my quest, usually he makes all sorts of promises of helping, or working out together, only to sit on the couch and watch me run around taking care of the house. lol

Well, the littlest man is up now, so I should start to get some things done and get into a routine.

September, already?

2008-09-01T20:06:00.000-04:00

I can't believe it's September already. I don't have anything specific to write about today, so I'm just going to point out some highlights of my weekend.

I found out that My Pic Tales is offering a single page printing service now.

They are also offering 20% off until today (though I read somewhere they extended it to Sept 7th). I just got some prints done through scrapbookpictures.com in July. I'm thinking about getting a couple prints done if the shipping isn't too much for just a handful of prints. Maybe I will get a couple extra to put in the 12x12 scrapbook frames I've been wanting to purchase.

I listed some things on Craigs List yesterday & today, there are still some other things that I'd like to get listed. The games I listed on ebay for the boys ended yesterday, we didn't get as much as I'd hope for them, but we will be free of them.

The boys start school tomorrow. I'm excited for them, it's going to open up so many doors for Anthony. Tom is going in late to see them off on the bus the first day. Tommy has his first (the team's 2nd) soccer practice on Wednesday evening.

I've got to go on a digital supply spending freeze for the next few months. I've done good in August & July, not buying too much, though I did buy stuff that I probably didn't need to. I would like to still allow myself $10 each payday, but every penny we can scrape together will help. We have alot of money going out in October, and not nearly enough money coming in. Ah, the joys of moving!

boys are back

2008-08-30T15:50:00.002-04:00

My boys are back home! They arrived Wednesday night with Aunt J and cousin J. I thought Aunt J would want to go do stuff with them, but we just sat around Thursday during the day. Thursday evening we took Tommy and Anthony to school to meet their teachers and find their classrooms. Tommy has the same teacher as he did last year, so he had no issues. Anthony's teacher seemed ok, she wasn't particularly easy to talk to, but I'm hoping it was because of all the chaos with it being an open house.

We told both teachers about our upcoming move and Tommy's teacher said she'd be glad to help with whatever we can. Anthony's teacher just seemed bothered that he would only be there for a month and a half.

J & J decided to stay and hang out with us on Friday. So, we went to eat at Moe's Southwestern Grill, we'd never been there before. They had really good burritos, I'm happy we finally tried it. Afterwards, we went to the soccer store to find Tommy's soccer uniform. $65 later and he had 2 jerseys, a pair of shorts, 2 pairs of socks and new cleats. The cleats were $40, so when we went to Target later I tried to convince him that the $18 ones were nice too. He preferred the ones from the soccer store, so to compromise, he didn't get his shiny orange and blue soccer ball that was more expensive than the plain black and white ones. lol

Today we went to the dreaded commisarry, I almost had a panic attack the moment we walked in there. We walked out spending too much, as is normal, and came home. So we are done for the day it is uncomfortably hot outside and I have a daunting pile of laundry waiting for me. So, we are going to hang out today and play games and watch movies.

we have a CA address!!!

2008-08-28T00:32:00.002-04:00

I am so relieved that the rental realtor finally got in touch with us today to let us know that they accepted our application to rent the house. It is such a weight off my shoulders to know that my family will have a place to live when we get there. We will be able to get the school situation figured out and do as much as we can from here so that the kids can get back into school quickly.

The lovely silver car in the driveway was our rental when we were out there. I wanted to take pics inside, but didn't bring my camera into any of the houses we saw. I meant to, but I also thought that we would be able to check out the house one more time before we left town, we just didn't want to go back and get our hopes all up for something that might fall through. So, we will try to remember what this house looked like on the inside. It's hard to differentiate the houses though, we saw so many. lol This one does have a large kitchen with white cabinets and a 3 car garage, also a loft area upstairs with a built-in desk area on one wall.

The kiddos are back. It was so nice and quiet until they got here! lol We've been trying to not push ourselves on them because they are having so much fun. I don't know what their plans are tomorrow, but I need to try to run to Wal-Mart to pick up a kindermat for Anthony and 5 composition books for Tommy. We haven't been able to find any comp books anywhere, I might have to order them online and hope they arrive in time for the first few days of school. I also need to finish cleaning up my room & start in on the computer room, it's been a dumping ground for all sorts of things lately.

August layouts

2008-08-26T20:58:00.002-04:00

I've been meaning to post them for a while, but you know, life gets in the way ;) lol

So, the one with the tree isn't quite one I love, but I'm glad I scrapped it. I can always re-do it if & when the mood strikes. I love the Awards one though, of these 4 it's my fav of the bunch. These are all the pages I've done this month, pretty good considering we've been gone & so busy.

So, that's all for today...I'm a bit tired from cleaning out the garage today. I hope that the mice won't come back, we had to scrub, wash & throw out so much stuff that they had gotten into. Gross.

family...

2008-08-25T20:44:00.002-04:00

I've been lucky enough to have been spared alot of drama from my in-laws for awhile. Unfortunately Tom and I are knee deep in drama. Tommy and Anthony start school on the 2nd, their school open house is the 28th of August, Tom and I agree they should both go especially Anthony. Now, here is where we run into the drama; the MIL and SIL wanted to take the boys for the last 2 weeks of the summer which normally wouldn't be a problem until about 2 weeks before (almost 3) when I found out when the open house was. SIL will have the boys during their open house, and she seems to think that our opinion doesn't matter and she doesn't want to bring them home or let us come get them. I told her about this as soon as Anthony went to his kindergarten testing, I told her that we would call the school and see if we could get the boys in to meet their teachers before hand. Noone asked us when we dropped the boys off last Saturday if they had met their teachers, so maybe the lack on communication is on my part for not specifically telling them that we were not able to get them in to meet their teachers. I called, Tom called; we tried.

Saturday when we got home after traveling all night SIL calls and asks if she can have the boys all week. I explain the situation, again. I tell her that we tried, but we do with what we have. She sounds like she is mad at me, I tell her that I'm sorry we couldn't have made arrangements otherwise, and that I will come get the boys or meet her halfway. She says she's not mad, just disappointed. She says that she's not going to be able to come down for a long weekend to visit like they are accustomed to once we move to CA. This of course makes me feel horrible, but it's nothing we can control. We go where they send us, we tried numerous times to get his orders changed to Lejeune, but even moving there wouldn't enable her to be able to drive down for a long weekend. We get off the phone and I could tell she was more than irritated with me.

So, tonight the MIL called Tom and had to have her say because SIL has called her a couple of times upset about having to bring them home earlier. Tom is on the phone for 15-20 minutes explaining, again, why it is important to us. She asks why can't we just go and get the information for the boys. Then she says she understands and is caught in the middle. She says that if they had known ahead of time (anyone remember 3 weeks?) they could have switched weeks so SIL would have had a whole week with them.

I'm really tired of it all. I feel like we are being punished by them for getting orders to CA (which we've tried to change) and now for wanting the boys (mainly Anthony) to go to their school open house and meet their teachers, get their bus tags, etc. We have to be flexible with Tom's job, we change what we can, adapt and make the best of what we can't change. With everything else we are trying to accomplish trying to organize I don't need this right now. We aren't trying to be mean, I want Anthony to meet his teacher.

Ugh...that's my rant for the day...still waiting on a yes or no from the house we really want, but that's a whole other story.

back from SoCal

2008-08-20T00:26:00.002-04:00

So, the hubs and I are back from SoCal. That was a long flight back, very glad that we didn't have the kids with us.

We got up super early to fly out there and stayed the whole week at the Pechanga Resort & Casino. It was nice to stay at a nicer place for a change, and we got to gamble for the first time! lol We won a little, lost a little, in the end I think we came out $14 ahead! lol Big winners that we are.

We saw some houses nearly each day of the week. Monday we went to Oceanside and saw the houses that were probably in our price range and we were assured that we didn't want to buy any of those. Tuesday we saw houses in Temecula to buy that were generally about twice the size, newer and in a much better area. Wednesday we saw 2 rentals, one that we loved and one we would settle on. lol We still have no firm answer on anything...which frustrates me. The other was running a credit check when we left to head down to San Diego, why they don't have an answer yet is frustrating.

We drove around a lot and saw a bit of Temecula's Wine Country, found all sorts of stores, we went down to Oceanside and walked around the street fair thing they had, wish we had more money, lots of stuff I wanted lol. We picked up some souvenirs for the kids and saw Pineapple Express. Friday we had to kill time around town just in case we got an answer so we saw Death Race. lol Afterwards we drove down to Coronado Beach. We tried to see Lisa Lampanelli on Thursday night, but they were sold out. It was nice to be able to do whatever we wanted, but we were out there for a specific reason and we had to kill more time waiting on call backs, it was frustrating. We both thought we would be busier so we didn't plan to do anything except go down to the beach at Oceanside one afternoon.

Will post pics later.

new iPod

2008-08-13T23:34:00.002-04:00

So, my dear, sweet husband was trying to do a good thing and get me something I had been wanting for awhile. And he even thought ahead and wanted to get it so it could be used on our trip this weekend. It arrived yesterday and I opened it once he got home, and I reacted so badly when I opened it and saw what it was. I am ashamed of myself, it's not that I didn't appreciate the thought - but when I opened the box it was a brand new 80gb iPod. I know that we don't have the money for that. Plus, we had agreed over a month ago that getting me a new one (yes, I already have an iPod, no it's not broken - but it doesn't play videos, and that's what I wanted) was a silly idea and it would be a waste of money. If I really wanted to watch movies that badly I could borrow his iPod if I should need to.

I hurt his feelings and I feel horrible about it. Today he says to me, "Sell your old one and don't worry about the money. Just open it." So, after dinner I did. I lifted it out of the box it came in, which is remarkably smaller than the box my other iPod came in. It's much thinner, but heavy. As I was spinning it around admiring the silver shiny-ness of it I noticed something on the back. Hmmm, what is that I though to myself. After closer inspection I realize that my dear husband had it engraved for me. After reading it and realizing that if we had returned it I would have never seen it, I felt like a complete ass. I should have just accepted it yesterday and been horribly grateful that he thought to get me anything at all.

I love him so much. Although at this moment he's a bit irritating. lol ;)

To our favorite woman
From all your favorite boys

Friday Letters

2008-08-11T23:26:00.001-04:00

I almost forgot that Kathy told me about this today. I decided that since Alex is wielding a crayon I must stay in the same room to keep an eye on him, so I figured I would check it out the Friday Letters blog.

It's got great prompts for you to write about. It would be wonderful for scrapbookers. I'm wondering about creating a blog for it myself and maybe creating a notebook to write in my own writing. I am going to start with prompt 1 when we get back (or on Friday if I have time) on the blog, maybe a blog of it's own, haven't decided yet. Creating a notebook filled with letters in my own writing really calls to me. I love having letters, I've kept all the ones that Tom wrote me while he was deployed each time. There are services, such as blurb that will create a book out of your blog, so I suppose, when the time comes, I could always order one of those.

Just another thing for me to add to my to-do list. This would be a great project though for me while we are driving across the country in October. I won't have housework to keep me from it and that time with the kids will help me remember their quirks that I love so.

{funny things}

2008-08-11T22:44:00.000-04:00

So, while I was visiting Andrea's blog today I saw her post a little cartoon about photography from WhattheDuck. I decided to go to the website to see more, I am so glad I did. The cartoons are so funny! Great shirts too, maybe I'll add one or two to my Xmas wish list ;)

We are trying to get everything pulled together for our trip this weekend. I'm finding that I'm going out of my fool mind trying to remember everything. Remind me not to leave everything til the last minute, I'm really feeling quite ill. Tom's been so busy at work too the past few days. Thursday, early morning, late night in the field; Friday early-ish morning and regular time off, but busy; Saturday, duty; Sunday, misc errands and then today was another early day and in the field all day. He's passed out on the couch currently. We're snapping at each other due to stress & lack of planning on our parts.

I'll post more another day, I have some stuff I should get taken care of before I need to try to get to bed.

cute camera straps

2008-08-08T20:42:00.002-04:00

I've been toying with the idea of getting myself one of those super cute camera straps for a while. I haven't been able to justify the $30 that they cost, plus shipping. When I finally have some extra money to get one, something comes up. That's my luck.

So, Natalie makes these super cute camera straps and I have fallen in love with 2 of the fabric choices she has, the Cha-Cha Carnival and the Vera Bradley Java Blue. I think I like the Java Blue better, but pink seems to be a wise choice to insure that the hubby doesn't steal the camera ;) lol

bad blogger...?

2008-08-07T22:41:00.002-04:00

At one point in my life I considered myself to be a pretty decent writer, now, after re-reading some of my previous posts I am questioning myself. Of course it doesn't help that I just skimmed over the Blogging Basics 101 blog and found that my rambling tendencies are more likely to be passed over by readers. That's too bad for me. I realize I don't write compelling posts on political standpoints, environmental concerns, or financial matters, and I'm sure that my less-than-cohesive entries aren't entirely interesting to some, but this is my blog. It's my life, and this is me.

I tend to ramble (just ask Kathy) in a phone conversation, so it's obviously going to spill over into a blog post about just how much fun I had doing laundry this afternoon.

Ah, well...I have nothing else to really say today...til another interesting thought comes along.

{babe} & other misc ramblings

2008-08-06T22:33:00.003-04:00

It's hard for me to call the hubs by his first name sometimes. If I'm talking to the kids I obviously refer to him as dad, if we are around family and I need his attention I say Tom, but any other time, it's babe. Both of us do it. Around our house we normally don't hear our real names much. I didn't give it much thought until I saw some other blog posts about it. I don't think we made a conscious decision to start doing that, it just happened. He doesn't call me anything else unless he's writing me and I don't call him anything else either. I don't know how I didn't notice this before.

I'm also beginning the process of dress shopping for Tom's cousin J's wedding (not nephew J, cousin J lol). Kathy helped me find a gorgeous dress at JCrew's website, it's a bit more than I wanted to pay, but it's so pretty. So, I'm going to sleep on it and then probably get Tom to help measure me for the right size. I've got to start getting into an exercise routine...gotta make that tummy flat. I really don't want to have to go buy a new body slimming piece. My goal by the wedding is to have lost at least 10 pounds. I think that's reasonable, it shouldn't make much of a difference in the fit of the dress (hopefully it'll be mostly weight in my thighs & stomach lost) and it's 3 months from now. I'd like to loose about 20 pounds total (geez it's weird to even think that I'm that much overweight), so 10 pound increments sound like reasonable goals to me. Especially since we are moving in Oct, I know I'll have issues with exercise and eating while we are driving across the country.

Tomorrow Anthony gets to go to the school & be tested to see where he falls for kindergarten. He doesn't want to go to school very much at all, it makes me feel even worse knowing that he will only go for about a month and a half before we move. One of my friends in CA gave me the link to the school in their community and the kindergarten program is a bit different. It is 5 days a week, but they get out 1 hour earlier than the rest of the school except for on Weds, then they get out 2 hours early. Oh well, we'll figure it out once we find out where we will be living, it doesn't matter much right now since we have no idea where they'll be going to school at.

I love fonts. I have a ton. I need to go through my stash and see how many are duplicates. I found Scrap Supply has some free ones...and other freebies too :)

This post took me nearly 2 hours to write up with Alex jumping all over me. It's after midnight though and he's finally tired enough to call it a night, and so am I. ~Later~

playing catch-up

2008-08-05T20:16:00.002-04:00

Found this Open Letter to Auto Industry Executives. Love it, I agree whole-heartedly with all of it. I would love to see how car seats fit in the back seats of cars or how much leg room an average person would have in the 3rd row of a truck or van. I don't want to have to spend my whole monthly gas allowance on driving from dealer to dealer to see how well my 3 kids (in a car seat and 2 boosters) will fit in the cars. I was disappointed to find out that it was such a PITA in our '05 Chevy Trailblazer. I loved my truck but once Alex was born and we had such a hard time buckling everyone in I was severely disappointed. It only needed another couple of inches and I swear the buckling and accidental unbuckling of the babies carseat base wouldn't have been so much of an issue.

I've been kind of sick since Sunday. Sunday evening and Monday were bad. I'm not sure what's wrong. I thought I was feeling rundown from not sleeping well and all the stress that came along with having J around. I have this odd dizziness and lightheadedness that I usually associate with getting a migraine. Then there's the nausea, I don't know what that's from. I felt a bit better today, but not 100%. I felt pretty bad by the time hubs came home so I napped for nearly an hour.

In less than two weeks the hubs and I will hand off our 3 children and truck to the MIL and SIL so they can take the kiddos for 2 weeks. The next day the hubs and I fly out of DC and into San Diego to hopefully find us a pretty house to live in. Then we come back and tackle the mess that is our garage, all the errands we've been putting off doing because it's just too much of a pain to do with the kids and erasing all evidence of Alex's artwork on the walls. lol

The in-laws were here over the weekend and we went up to DC on Saturday, it was nice to get up there and walk around again. I took some pictures, but dealt with Alex alot, so I didn't get as many as I wanted to. I have to work on some of the ones I took, so maybe tomorrow I'll get them posted. Saturday night the hubs and I got out to see a movie, the 2nd one this summer! We saw Dark Knight - I {love} Heath Ledger as the Joker, he was awesome.

My next crafty project, after I get a few layouts done from the summer, is to make a pretty cover on a composition book. I saw Nicole's on her blog here and thought it looked so awesome. I've been meaning to make a special notebook for certain things, so this will hopefully this will keep grubby hands out of my notebooks! lol I just have to figure out exactly how to do it and have it look nice.

17 days

2008-07-31T23:27:00.000-04:00

Only 17 days until Tom and I fly out to CA! I'm hoping that we can find something nice, preferably to buy, but I have a feeling that we won't get enough money to do that. We'll see though. Otherwise I hope we can find something to rent that won't be available until the middle of Oct or beginning of Nov.

I had high hopes for base housing until I remembered that you can't run a business out of your house if you live on base. So, the whole photography business thing would be a no-go unless I pulled some money from who knows where to get office space - and that wouldn't be cheap.

We've got just over 2 months until Tom checks out, I can't believe it's August already! Anthony has a meeting to be "tested" for kindergarten on the 7th, Tom has duty on the 9th (gee, how nice, another Saturday duty), and the boys go to MI on the 16th. Next week there are a bunch of places that we need to call to double check on things, TMO for moving, Soccer Association for information on Tommy's uniform, USAA for insurance stuff and once we have a pack up date we have to call our loverly landlord and tell him. We have a long list of things to take care of while the boys are gone too, we'll have a couple of days that Tom will be off work and the boys still gone so hopefully we'll get most of it taken care of instead of sitting around playing games. lol

a talking fool

2008-07-30T22:25:00.002-04:00

It always amazes me when I realize how fast the boys are growing up. Since coming back from MI Alex has just been talking so much. It's obvious that he's trying to repeat you, he repeats almost everything that we say to him. Once again I realize how nice it is to have him tell me cup, chicken, or cheese when he wants something.

We've been going for nightly walks (except for tonight) and he loves it. He likes to get a piggy back ride from me, but that is only possible when Tom is out with us since lil man likes to not hang on and lean back alot.

I've been neglecting my camera lately. I don't like it, but I can't find the time or inspiration with all the stress. My MIL and FIL come in this weekend to get J. They want to go up to DC to a museum or something on Saturday so I'm hoping the humidity isn't bad. It's been pretty miserable here the past few weeks, with the odd nice day here and there. I feel bad because I get miserable in the heat and humidity so I don't want to take the kids outside. Besides, there's always something that needs to be done. I neglect the laundry or dishes for a day and they take over the house.

So, I haven't done anything in the way of scrapping. I have a layout partially finished sitting open & unfinished in photoshop, really shouldn't do that to myself, I need to remember to save these things. I would like to finish it, but I just can't see the final couple of things that it needs to be done. Besides, I haven't quite finished the journaling on it. Only a few more days and then I get my family back for 2 weeks. Then my boys go to MI for 2 weeks. I hope that while they are there they don't become disrespectful brats like the one that is visiting here is. I'm so tired of the attitude and unwillingness to cooperate and listen, it just gets old.

Well, it's time to try to get lil man to bed.

no more games

2008-07-26T19:33:00.002-04:00

That is what it has come down to in my house. I tried to be nice today and set up the Wii with the old Gamecube controllers so that they could play a gamecube game. I made them promise me that there would be no fighting and that they were promising to be good the rest of the night and tomorrow (a buddy of Tom's wants to take them swimming). A bit after beginning to play I hear J tell Anthony that he doesn't like him anymore (or it might've been he hated him, regardless) so I yelled down the hall to turn off the games. I asked and they just stared at me like I was speaking a foreign language. So, no more games today or tomorrow. I needed a minute to cool off from the whole thing so I sat my lazy but in front of my computer for a bit.

I listed some more old games on ebay. I want to scrap but have no motivation to. I think this whole disrespect from J is really getting to me. I'm in awe that he acts the way he does. He comes from an entirely different home environment and I try to remind myself of that, but some of this is just ridiculous. If either of my boys looked at me, talked to me or treated me the way he does I think I would just haul off and slap them and lock them in their rooms. Of course I can't do that with J because he just sits in the room anyway (I wouldn't be able to bring myself to smack him) missing his mom and being sad that he can't go home yet.

I have this strange feeling in the pit of my stomach that they are going to come back from 2 weeks in MI with little attitudes. And right before school starts too, nothing like a new routine, lack of sleep from staying up so late, and new school year jitters to content with along with some newly acquired attitude changes. Just what I want to deal with the first couple days of school. I'm almost hoping that Anthony will have an orientation with his teacher, an open house or something that week so she can bring them home early. As much as I'm going to try to get a ton of stuff done while they are gone, having them be good kids is much more important. The two older boys will be in school this fall so it'll only be me and Alex. I might be able to get some things accomplished.

Ok, well, enough venting for me...I've got to go take away the game systems before little hands gets on the Wii or it's bed time. What a wonderful night this will be.

so happy it's Friday

2008-07-25T20:06:00.002-04:00

I am so glad the weekend is here. It has been a long week with all 4 boys here. I can't wait for next weekend though. Then I'll have 2 weeks to spend with just my boys.

Our internet was out through most of yesterday & last night from a storm that went through the night before. Of course my phone was fine until I was talking to Kathy (it's all your fault!) and around 12/12:30 it just cut out. Then my internet stopped working. We finally figured it was time to call about 6 or so and we were told it was estimated to be back running on Monday. I was so irritated. It turned back on sometime after 12 I think and then at 6 Tom received a text from Verizon saying the problem has been resolved. Gee, thanks for the notice.

Poor Tom has duty tomorrow so we are trying to make the best of tonight. The kids have been nearly impossible since about 1:30 though, so it's been interesting to say the least.

Well, I'd love to ramble some more but there is a 2 year old on my lap that is threatening to knock my laptop onto the ground or rip off more keys.

{frustration!}

2008-07-22T15:33:00.000-04:00

So, I think that I'm really not cut out to have 4 kids. lol These past few days with my nephw here have just been near horrible. He's a good kid, most of the time. My SIL doesn't push him on a lot of things so he skates by on a lot of things he shouldn't do. There have been quite a few times this week that I just wanted to smack the smug, disgusted look off his face. I try to remind myself multiple times a day that he's used to it only being him & his mom, but then I see how he acts when we tell him to do things and the way he treats Tommy, Anthony and Alex.

I had a blow up this morning and had to call Kathy. I was so close to running outside to smoke. I haven't been able to do things I want, let alone need to do because I constantly have to be on their cases about not sitting and watching tv all day. No matter if it's a show they probably don't like they will sit there for the sake of sitting there.

I know most kids do this, but J seems to have a knack for it. My boys do on occasion too, I know full well that they are far from angels. lol The difference is when I tell them to go do something productive for a bit they go and play. They go to the toy room & get their nerf guns and battle their stuff animals, they play with the army guys, they go down in the basement and make up games and play in the tent. When I suggested the past 2 days for them to go do something productive, J went and laid on Tommy's bed. He's a part of the family until he goes home, how can I accept him doing that but not my own kids? I can't . It's so hot here that I can't stand it, so we don't go outside like we should. Last night, however we went for a walk at 7:30 and since it was decent out Tom and I began to tackle the jungle that is our backyard. The boys, well they sat on the deck.

I'm at a loss as to what to do. We don't have enough money to be running around doing stuff everyday. I took them to the library on Sunday. I'm ready to go back, but I don't know if they are. We will probably go tomorrow regardless though. I bought a paper craft magazine and showed them all the cool stuff they could make and they started in on it, and that lasted about 20 minutes. I don't expect them to do it all day.

After the blow up this morning, which obviously didn't phase any of them because I've gotte n3 requests to play games. I said that they were disrespectful, spoiled brats this morning. Maybe not the bed choice of words, I'm sure the yelling didn't help, but I couldn't help it. For the second day in a row I offered something for lunch and it was disrespectfully rejected. I had had enough. My boys don't act like that and I will be damned if they learn it from J.

So, I think I'm going to find a good movie to watch and chill out in my room for a bit.

where'd all the {money} go?

2008-07-21T20:31:00.002-04:00

So, yeah, Tom got paid last Monday, somehow, when I checked our bank account this morning, we are down to nothing. How could that have happened?! Thankfully I went grocery shopping (though only planned for a week) and all the bills are paid, but we should have had plenty of money to last us until next payday (which isn't until the 31st). WTF? I really have no idea how we went through it so fast. Because of the fact that we will need diapers by the end of the week I am seriously considering returning what I can of my goodies from Michaels. Or get someone to buy our desktop. lol

So, because of the money issue I decided that the rebate reward check from our credit card was going to go into the bank for cushioning purposes rather than go towards the balance of the credit card as intended. I piled the 4 boys into the car at 3 and headed to base, the branch there is closer to us? I get off Rt 1 and I can't turn left off the exit, because that gate to base is closed. So, I have to basically get on 95, go back the way I cam on Rt 1 (with no where close to turn around) or go through the other side of base to get to the other branch on Garrissonville Rd. I decided to just go back up Rt 1 to Garrisonville Rd. This took more time and was nearly unbearable in the nearly 100* weather and no working a/c in the truck. I sat through 3 rotations at a left turn light, then waiting behind 3 other cars at the bank because there was only 1 lane open. When it was finally my turn I found out that their system was down, but she could give me a hand-written receipt.

I'm done for the day. I think I'm going to do my pilates dvd or get on the elliptical for a few minutes and take a shower. I'm about ready for bed.

a new week ahead

2008-07-20T13:28:00.007-04:00

A new week starts tomorrow. We had a pretty busy weekend with my MIL, SIL and nephew arriving Friday evening. Saturday we went to the National Marine Corps Museum, to eat at iHop and then on to Target. MIL and SIL left this morning before I got up. So we've been relaxing inside today. It's really hot here lately and I can't bear to go outside, tomorrow it's supposed to be hotter.

I got some new layouts printed out from scrapbookpictures.com...it's always so cool to see my stuff in print! I do wish though that I had tried a different type of paper, something with some texture and depth to it. Now I need a few more pages for my 12x12 book. I hit up Michaels after Target yesterday and grabbed some refills, but when I got home I realized they are for the wrong book. Figures, lol.

I'm on Blythe Evans CT as a guest for this month. She has a great new spiral bound alpha out in her store. I also just finished a layout with her Iced Mocha Latte paper pack.

How did my boys grow so fast?! If you are looking for a some new goodies, check out her stuff! She's got two stores, one at OScraps and one at Blythe Evans.com.

So, I need to go get dressed. I'm headed back to Michaels to return those refill pages...it doesn't help any that they threw in an ad that said today from 4-6 present the coupon and get 20% (or was it 25%)
off your order, including sale priced items. So, I think I'm going to go and get the right refill pages, look for another 12x12 album and some cute embellishments that are hopefully on sale to add to my stash. Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend!

{100}

2008-07-16T14:39:00.002-04:00

This is my 100th blog post! Wow...

So, I haven't been on here as much as normal, I didn't realize until Monday that my MIL and SIL would be here this weekend to bring my nephew to stay with us for another 2 weeks. I haven't been able to get into a routine with getting the housework done so I've tried to put off all my online activities until I get some of that done.

Currently I am taking a break from cleaning. I just finished cleaning up my bathroom. I hate cleaning bathrooms, I will take a mountain of laundry or dishes over the bathrooms. I would even be willing to cut back on some of our fun spending if it meant I could have someone come in to clean my bathrooms. Yuck! What can I say...my hubby didn't get a housewife. lol

I've been trying to find a place to get a logo designed that won't cost me an arm and a leg. Holly McCaig Designs has some nice pre-made logos that I like. They are less than $100, so I figured that I could get by with that for now and once I started making some money get a new one designed. But...there's this part of me that thinks I should just get the one I want designed from the beginning, I'm just afraid of the cost.

I got another layout done. :) 2 in one week, I must be on a roll. lmao I really like the way this one turned out, it took me hours to finally decide that a clean look was best. It was even posted in the Gallery Standouts Thread at DST! Which is a first for me, I wish I had seen the comment on it before the thread disappeared so I could thank the person who posted it in there, it really meant alot to me that someone noticed my layout.

Well, I feel like there are a million things left to do so I should remove myself from the pull of my computer and go get something accomplished. Plus the grocery shopping is waiting too, man I dislike grocery shopping too. We always spend too much money and never have enough food.

FOB2Y 7/10

2008-07-13T00:13:00.002-04:00

So, my favorite vacation spot?

Definitely Sanibel Island. My grandparents owned a condo there from the early 80's through 2005. I was lucky enough to be able to go down there most summers for a week with them. Once my grandfather retired we would go down to stay for a month or more at a time. It wasn't so easy once I got a bit older and had a job, but I still tried to go when I could. I was lucky enough to be able to take Tom and Tommy down there one year (2002). It was always so peaceful there. It was horribly expensive, but the perfect place for a vacation. Tom said it too once we were there for a day or so, I don't think he "got it" until he was able to be there. I miss knowing that we had a place to stay if we had a chance to go again; I have so many great memories there.

Here are a couple photos of Tom and Tommy in Sanibel in July of 2002.

For the From Our Blog 2 Yours challenge at SSD.

Relaxing Saturday

2008-07-13T00:02:00.002-04:00

So, today is Saturday. We spent the day doing nothing. We watched Definitely, Maybe and played games. Tom left on an infomercial that made me want to order the Malibu Pilates chair. We picked what we could out of the pantry since no one wanted to go to the store.

I took some time to start cleaning off my laptop harddrive. I need to get my photos all backed up along with my layouts and kits. Once I have a fresh back-up to work with I am going to try to run the EHD through the router and see if it works the way it's supposed to. If it does I'm going to do the same thing with the printer.

My goal for this upcoming week is to find enough South Beach phase 1 recipes as I can and make a grocery list that hopefully won't break the bank. I wanted to start it this week since J isn't staying with us this week, but I just can't get everything together in a day.

I did do a layout today. I was nice to lose myself in scrapping again. Tomorrow I think we will do much of the same things we did today, though I think I will do a load of laundry, get everyone a bath (or shower) and try to run to the grocery for some fresh fruit and things for the week.

Finally Home

2008-07-11T22:00:00.002-04:00

So, we are finally back in our own home after a long drive today. It was all fine until we hit 395 and it all went downhill from there. We should have been off the expressway (at the very least, if not all the way home) by 5:45...we finally were able to hit our exit at around 6:45. Then we had to run and get some food; the joys of depleting your food supply before leaving town.

So, we are home again. Happy to be out of the car and with our own things and our own rules. Tom is currently recovering our gamertag on Xbox Live and I am catching up on emails and good web misc I missed out on while I had limited internet time.

Til another day when I have something better to post about...have a wonderful Friday night!

on vacation

2008-07-07T16:31:00.002-04:00

So, we are out of our own home and visiting family in MI. While I really wouldn't classify this as a vacation since it's far more stressful and chaotic than being at home, Tom is off of work and we are just sitting around our own home.

We have been busy since being up here. Friday we went to the lake and visited with family, played in the lake, went for boat rides and watched fireworks. On Saturday we went to see my grandparents along with my aunt and cousins. We took the boys to the Yum-Yum Tree and had a small lunch, the intention was to get ice cream, but a few of us were hungry so we had a light lunch. We said good-bye to my aunt and cousins since they were leaving on Sunday to go back home and we ventured back to Tom's mom's house since Tom an I were going to let Jackie take the boys and we were going to go see a movie. We packed the boys a bag and took off for the theater. We saw Wanted and really liked it. Then we ventured on to Best Buy where we spent too much money, again. Tom is pleased though because now his parents are equipped with an Xbox 360 and some good games.

Yesterday was Jason's 9th birthday and the day was spent at the lake. The boys had a lot of fun since there were a couple of other kids there as well. I have a lot of photos, I took about 200 yesterday trying to get a good shot of the kids on "Great Big Mabel" lol the big tubing raft that the neighbors let us borrow. We all had a lot of fun on that.

So, I need to get up and clean up the mess we've left in our wake before we aren't the only ones in the house anymore.

{20}

2008-07-01T00:19:00.001-04:00

This is my goal, to lose the 20 pounds I've put on since last August. I still can't believe that I gained that much weight. I felt pretty good about myself when Kathy & I went to NC in July; when I came home apparently it all went downhill.

So, with Kathy's advice and after taking a look at some recipes I have decided to try the South Beach diet. I really think that because of phase one and the 10lbs or so weight loss in the first 2 weeks I will really be motivated to continue with it. We are hoping to get to MI for the 4th and the week following so it will start when we get back. While we are gone I am going to make lists and gather recipes to try out. Tom said he wants to try it with me, and since we aren't eliminating so much stuff, the boys will be making the transition too. They won't technically be on the diet, we will still get them fruit & chips, but the meals will be the same.

So, wish us luck. I really want to just get down to 130 again. My jeans hurt when I wear them and I'm embarrassed about my pregnant belly I have acquired even though I'm not pregnant.

So, I think this Kalyn's Kitchen looks like it will be my go-to blog for SB recipes. I've only checked out a couple, but I think tomorrow I may try this egg muffin recipe; I'm loving the idea that you can make extra & freeze the extra. I just received the South Beach Diet Supercharged in the mail today. I've glanced through it and read through most of the first chapter. I'm glad I decided to order the book, I'll hopefully be able to look it over while we are in MI.

So, besides having losing weight & food on my mind I have been pre-occupied with all our plans for the fall. Tom and I have tickets to head to San Diego (I may have mentioned this previously) in August, hopefully to find a house to buy. Once we come back from MI I am hoping to get rid of the rest of our unnecessary items. The black desk that is out in the garage will go on Craig's list, the rocking chair in my room, I also have some computer programs and books that I plan to list on ebay and half.com. I'm hoping to sell enough to make a decent dent in our credit card balance. I also have to be diligent about reeling Tom in on his dvd purchases. So, we are going to start making lists of new releases, agreeing on a number and taking out the appropriate amount of money out of the ATM on payday. I don't think he has any concept as to how much money he gets paid, how much money goes out in bills, and how much money we should be able to save each month but don't because he likes to spend. Of course when he gets something, then I want things too...I'm not completely innocent in all this.

Goodness...I've just rambled on for far too long. I'm off to search out more SB friendly recipes and head to bed. :)

{slip 'n slide}

2008-06-29T23:21:00.002-04:00

So, Tom & I agreed a few months ago that while the cheapo pools are fun for the kiddos we just don't take care of it like we should. Besides we don't have any time to fix the grass that would inevitably die underneath. So, we agreed on a slip 'n slide for this summer. We finally went out to get it on Friday afternoon. Target only had 2 kinds and we weren't in the mood to go running around anymore so we bought the inflatable raft style with the little "lagoon" at the end. Jason and Tommy were a bit disappointed since they had hoped for the shark pool or something like that. Once we got it to the house and set up they all had so much fun.

Anthony is unsure of running & sliding down it, but he will crawl to the end under the shower of water. Alex doesn't have the balance or grace to run & slide, so I'm glad that he doesn't attempt it, he likes to crawl don the slide and dive into the pool. I took over 300 photos that afternoon, I deleted quite a few, I think I'm down to 270 now. There are still some more I need to go through. I did get a chance to edit some of them so I will try to post those in a minute.

On the digi side of things...I created my first layout as a team member for Amanda Heimann. I used the Tiki Tiki Boom Boom kit for it. I've been really good on not spending money on supplies too, only $1 since payday! lol I think that's a record for me, but I really do have more than I have used. So, until I get a bunch more layouts done, no more hefty spending on digi supplies; but who can resist the $1 days some shops have! lol :)

And, now onto the photos...I will post them as thumbnail size so that it won't take the page sooo long to load. Hopefully they will look good enough to click on and see the larger version. Once I get my new watermark/logo done up I will begin to post them on my photography blog too.

photography blog

2008-06-29T00:01:00.002-04:00

So, I am *pretty sure* I have settled on my photography business name, of Kelly B Photography. Not sure exactly how the logo & print version of the name will look yet though. Holly at the Pink Ink forums gave me the suggestion after I posted with my ideas. I need to run it by the hubby first, but I like it. It doesn't require anyone to spell or pronounce our last name. lol So, I started up a blogger blog for it and I will hopefully be able to get my first post up there tomorrow.

We are still waiting for Tom's leave to be approved too. It's irritating that it's been sitting waiting to be approved for over 5 days since they've been back. Hopefully on Monday we'll have some sort of answer, it would be nice to know whether or not to start packing or not; and whether or not Jackie should plan on driving down to get Jason.

I've got quite a few pics from our new slip 'n slide adventure last night, it's just hard for me to do much right now since lil man is rolling all over on the couch next to me.

Tom and I also have tickets to go out to San Diego in August! Hopefully we'll be able to find a house to hopefully buy, or at the very least rent. I can't run a business out of a house on base, so I wouldn't be able to start up my photography business while living there without renting office space or something. The boys will be with Jackie and maybe grandma, but we'll see as the time gets closer.

Oh, and my tutorial find of the day, use of the clone tool from Taylor Made; I can't wait to have time to try it out. Well, I'm off for the night. It's time to relax & have a drink or two while I laugh at Tom & his friend in NC battle each other on Guitar Hero III.

happy hump day

2008-06-25T12:00:00.002-04:00

So, it's Wednesday already...I don't know where the beginning of the week went. It has been slightly stressful with the additional child here, but not horrible. I think I feel like we must entertain him during his stay. Which wouldn't be so bad if we had money to do alot of stuff, besides a small fortune for gas money.

We did take them to the pool on base yesterday. It was half the cost of the other pool I was going to take them to, but someone complained because he had to stay in the kiddie pool with us. We've been watching some of the movies we've stashed; Jumper, Be Kind Rewind, Semi-Pro and The Bucket List. It's been nice to relax with the hubby for a change, but I feel really lazy.

While I was gone I was hoping to get some time to scrap & take a lot of photos, but that didn't happen either. I took a few photos, but did nothing on the scrapbook front. Speaking of scrapbooking...Amanda Heimann added me to her CT! I'm excited, I love her stuff. I also applied to Karah Fredricks CT, hoping that maybe this will help to curb my digi-spending. lmao

So, I should really go do something productive...I will leave you with a few of my favorite photos from our trip.

Back in action

2008-06-23T17:06:00.002-04:00

...sort of...

So, upon arriving home something odd was happening with the internet connection. I ignored it Saturday night hoping that the problem would be resolved overnight and it would all be ok the next day. Unfortunately it wasn't. Tom spent alot of time on the phone with Verizon and they scheduled a service call for Thursday, between 8am and 10pm. I wanted to drop their service right then and get something else. Thankfully, a new router, reset of the modem and some patience and it seems to all be working. Well, everything except the desktop, we'll get that figured out though.

So, it was nice to see everyone in MI, but it's really nice to be home. I'll update more when I've had a chance to get my email cleared out and some things taken care of.

FYI going to be MIA

2008-06-10T20:40:00.002-04:00

lol

I'm going to be headed out of town for a week. The boys and I are headed up to visit family in MI. When we leave to come home we'll be bringing my nephew back with us. The cost of the summer care is astonishing so we offered to have Jason come stay with us as often as he and Jackie wanted throughout the summer.

So, I've been busy making lists, cleaning, and stressing. This is the first trip I've taken with any of the kids by myself. It doesn't help that I also have to worry about driving through DC traffic. Ugh, just the thought of that makes me want to cry! lol So, I won't be on much over the next week or so. Wish me luck on my drive. I'm hoping to get lots of time to take pictures and maybe a bit of time to scrap. :)

What a party {animal}

2008-06-07T22:05:00.001-04:00

lmao I am such a lame person. Here I sit with nothing to do on a Saturday night. Not that I would expect a hot date or anything (what would my husband think??? lol) seeing as we normally never do anything on a Saturday night. My kids are waiting in their beds for me to tuck them in. Alex is downstairs passed out on the couch (since 8!) waiting for me to bring him upstairs for the night. The boys started playing games around 8 or so and I took a quick nap! lmao I'm still tired, but I have a mess from dinner that needs to be picked up. There's an overflowing garbage can also, but it's pouring outside again so it'll wait until tomorrow.

The boys & I attempted to go through toys today. I just didn't have the motivation to do much though so we only conquered the basement. We have a box full of baby toys now and the big, plastic toy box is now waiting upstairs to be cleaned and listed on Craigs List. Although I'm half tempted to keep it for a while longer. Now I just have to go through the boxes strewn all over the basement to see whats what.

It was a bit warm here today. I never did remember to check the temperature at all during the day, but I ended up turning on the a/c. It was just unbearable upstairs and on the main level. The main level was pretty comfortable after a bit, but it's still horribly stuffy upstairs. Hopefully I can turn it off in a couple of days and not have to mess with it again until Tom comes home so we can turn the vents. I have no idea how to do it so I'll just leave it to him, I hope that it solves the problem.

I finished up a layout today that I started a few weeks ago. I started it for the SSD Cookie Decorating Challenge, but I couldn't get anything to work for me once I got all the photos in place. Now I'm glad I waited, the I Sea collab from Amanda & Eva is cute and I love how it looks now. I try not to buy many "cutesy" kits because I find that I don't scrap with cutesy stuff, but this one was adorable. I was hoping that it had more animal stickers, but oh well.

I upgraded the family blog to the newest version of Wordpress and uploaded a new theme. I hate that I haven't found one that I love. I know that a good part of that is because it's not personal, but I just haven't been able to make one up. I even started to try to make a new header today for the new theme and I couldn't do it.

Well, I suppose I should get my butt up off the bed and get the kiddos tucked in & the kitchen cleaned up. I have to start making my lists of things to get done before we leave. Tom will be home in 2 weeks, I can't believe that nearly a week has passed already, but I also can't believe it's only been a week. lol Ah, I love the thunder. :)

{headache}

2008-06-05T22:35:00.002-04:00

Ugh, my boys give me such a headache sometimes. Other times, they make an existing dull headache into a full blown crippling headache. To top it off, it's hot & muggy here. I really should put the air on, but I'm trying to wait it out as long as possible. Besides, if we could get the air from the outside in, it's so nice and cool outside, in the mid 60's I think. I really can't wait for Tom to be home.

He called briefly tonight. While telling him about his buddy picking up his bike & explaining that I can't lock the garage and said buddy may have to come by and re-lock it for me I realized how lonely I am here. When Sam stopped by it was the first time I had seen one of my friends since we went down to visit them when Chris left at the beginning of April. A week or so prior to that Jackie & Jason were here for Easter, before that it was when we were in MI over the holidays. The realization of it all was a bit much for me. Thankfully Tom was ready to get off the phone and go to the movie they were going to see. Even though he is gone for work right now, I am pretty envious of him. When he went to Norfolk he got to go out nearly every night with friends. The time out at 29 Palms isn't as relaxed as their trips to Norfolk are, but when they get downtime they can go to a $1 movie, to the SNCO club, to the pool and I think there's a bowling alley there. It's still work and he's still there with quite a few people he doesn't really care for, but he is away and there is a bit of downtime, even if it's not everynight.

Sorry, I didn't mean to sound depressing or like I was having a pity-party for myself. It was a pretty major realization for me though.

So....onto fun things. I got to do some guilt-free shopping at The Digi Chick today! New stuff out today and 20% off! Plus, if you spend $10 you get the store-wide grab bag automatically added to your cart. I'm downloading it now :) Yesterday I managed to get a couple of layouts done. I have so many cute pictures that have stories to go along with them that I want to scrap but I sit here and stare at them and I can't start a page. Well, it seems as though Alex may finally be settling down for the night (3rd night in a row that he'll be asleep before midnight, is this a change in routine? I sure hope so!) so I want to get ready to pass out here shortly.

Oh, and I've been looking for someone to do me up a logo for my business. I can't believe how much logos cost. I mean I knew I wasn't going to be able to get one for $10 or anything, but $100+? Wow. So, I'm going to have to start saving up my pennies and decide on a business name. After discussing with Tom I have decided against Everyday Chaos, because he didn't think it came across well for a photography business. So, until yesterday I was pretty settled on Kelly B Photography. That is until I saw another website that made me think of In This Moment Photography. I'm sure it's been taken, but I like the sound of it. I still need to decide though if I want a snazzy business name or just use my name. I like the idea of using my own name so that people will remember it, but at the same time I don't want people to come to my home after finding my name in the phone book. Besides, I have a sneaking suspicion that the hubby may begin to mess with the cameras (not that he doesn't already) and I'm half hoping that we can make a joint venture out of this.

Anyway, that's my babbling allowance for the day ;)

Craftyness

2008-06-04T23:56:00.001-04:00

I know, it's probably not a word, but it sounded good for what I need it for. :) I was wandering around online today and found this blog on Crafty Storage. I love the spaces they spotlight and I love seeing different solutions for the same problem. I wish I was a crafty person and seeing these spaces makes me wish even more that I was good at crafts.

Between kiddos, phone calls & thunderstorms this post has taken me about 3+ hours to write. lmao So, I'm out for the night. I will be back tomorrow.

I won!

2008-06-04T12:08:00.001-04:00

lol The Digi Chick has been holding a monthly contest with prizes, each month different prizes. For May it was $150 worth of gift certificates to certain designers stores at The Digi Chick. Guess who won??? ME!!!! Yay!!! I've been trying to curb my spending on supplies, especially since I haven't been inspired to scrap at all lately. I've started quite a few pages only to trash them the following day, wondering to myself what the hell was I thinking.

Sam & the kids stopped by last night. The kids had fun seeing each other. It was nice to sit and talk to a friend in person for a change. I haven't seen any of my friends sine we went down to NC to see Chris off in the beginning of April. Tom's friends stop by to leave their stuff in our garage. So it was nice to sit and hang out with Sam for a bit.

Today I feel like crap though, I don't know if I ate too much Chinese last night (her treat) or if I'm feeling the effects of being so anxious about our impending trip to MI. I found out yesterday that the last day of school isn't the 16th, it is the 13th, so I think I am going to pull Tommy out at 11 and get on the road. I don't think a couple of hours will make much of a difference on the last day of school. I want to get on the road before traffic gets crazy and get there before it's too late. So, 9 days I think. It feels like I have a ton of stuff to do. Hopefully this weekend the boys will help me get things taken care of so that there isn't much to do next week. I'll need luck with that one, Tommy will be good about it, as always, but Anthony & I will come to blows over it, as always. lol

Giving it up...the desktop

2008-06-02T21:10:00.003-04:00

Tom and I have been pondering the idea of getting rid of our desktop for a few months now. He sees that hardly anyone ever touches it sees as we both have a laptop. I do use it, occasionally. When the kids want to check on their webkins, we set them up on there so they can all see the monitor. We also have our older desktop out in the garage, well the tower anyway, the monitor is in a box in the basement. I would love to find someone I could sell it to, but I feel bad asking money for things that aren't the latest technology anymore. I don't know if I could get $50 for the old tower, it's probably 5 years old now.

I am just torn. I see the idealness of it, no need for the big, bulky desk we have, one less thing for Alex to screw up, etc. But I see it as too that our router goes through the desktop (we could get a new one, I know), the printer is set up to the desktop, and I like knowing that it's there available to use if I want. All things that are easy to get around. I love our new desktop though! lol This is how I argue with myself. :) It's so nice & compact, being everything is built into the monitor and we have no tower now. Though Tom did promise me that once we move we could get an iMac, which is compact too.

Anyone know anyone who might be interested in a less that year old Sony Vaio? lol

Just another Monday

2008-06-02T18:38:00.001-04:00

So today was a better day for me. After thinking more about Tom leaving I think that I was so distressed because this is a preview of the inevitable when we move to CA. I know that when we get out there it is highly likely that he will be deployed. I've been through it before, but I think we grew too content with our lives here.

I realized this morning that we will be headed to MI in about 12 days. I can't believe that it crept up so suddenly! As long as Tommy's last day of school doesn't have anything too fun or important going on, he said he would rather go to MI the weekend before. His last day of school is a Monday, so I figured that we might be able to leave after he gets out of school on Friday. Though I'm extremely anxious about the drive as it is, add to it driving through DC on a Friday afternoon and I'm a wreck. lol

I tried to stay away from the internet today. Took some time to order my Tracy Joy bag, I really wanted 2, but thought better of it. I also read the new Digi-Dare and think I may try my hand at it. I have a few things that I want to list on Amazon or some other book site. Maybe a few things to list on ebay as well, we'll see.

Weight: I have to do something about my weight. I no longer need to lose 10 pounds or so, but more like 20 now. I am so disgusted with myself I almost don't want to ever leave the house. I know that this is all my fault, the point I'm at now, but I don't want it to be that way anymore. So yesterday I did 3/4 of my pilates workout and today I did 100 crunches. I am trying to keep Alex awake as long as possible so that I can get him to bed earlier tonight. If I am successful, I am going to get on the elliptical. 30 minutes is my ultimate goal, but I'd be happy if I can do 15-20, my legs are kind-of hurting me today from the stretching I did yesterday.

Ok, enough rambling for today, I know this is just mindless babble for most of you ;) Unfortunately I have no new layouts or pictures to post today. I need to get my camera out more.

Boring Sunday

2008-06-01T22:01:00.003-04:00

So I sat in my room most of the day. Don't get me wrong, as much as I wanted I didn't crawl back under the covers and go to sleep. I read a little, I was able to get through 3/4 of my pilates dvd before the kids started fighting, I did more laundry and folded what was finished. I even put the folded stuff away.

It's 10pm, all the kids are asleep. Though I can't say much for Alex, he woke up crying around 8:45, I changed him and refilled his cup and brought him upstairs. Poor guys one eye was all swollen, thankfully he went back to sleep. The older two are passed out as well. I think I'm going to call it a night now also.

{sadness}

2008-06-01T10:43:00.002-04:00

DH left this morning around 1:15am. I don't know why but we were both very distressed about the whole thing. We've been through worse, we've done this before, so it's not like it's a new thing for us. It is just completely bizarre how upset we were over the whole situation. I know that I can manage by myself for 3 weeks, I've managed longer and under worse conditions. I wish I knew why I was feeling this way. I have yet to hear from him though since he left on his excursion across the country. I hope everyone made it on time and that he made it to work ok, it was really foggy when he left.

So as I am making my way around this morning I feel like I'm in a fog. Alex woke up at 9:30 and I thought he wanted to go back to sleep, but instead he wanted to get up and see what mischief he could cause with his brothers. I really want to crawl back under the blankets and just sleep. I am really worried about the drive to MI, money and so many other things I can't think straight. I think it's my mind's way of trying to not dwell on the fact that Tom isn't just at work today.

I finished a layout during the week, I also finished a 2pg on Anthony's birthday, but it doesn't look right to me, so I will probably work on it some more. I want to get out and take some pictures but I keep forgetting to bring my camera, though it doesn't help that it's hard to focus on taking pictures when the kids are being obnoxious. lol Maybe we'll get out for a walk or something and I'll be able to take it with us.

Well, til another day, I think I am going to find my soft fleece blanket (although it's pretty warm already) and curl up with a new book. I've been a reading machine lately. Twilight, then 19 Minutes and yesterday I finished The Choice. I really liked them all, my favorites being Twilight and The Choice. I have two other Nicholas Sparks books I haven't read that I found in my book box that somehow hadn't made it into the house since we moved in here.

I {heart} Amazon

2008-05-31T20:22:00.004-04:00

I bought my Canon 40D from there in the beginning of May with our tax "rebate" check. About a week or so later Canon started their rebate promotion. I toyed with the idea of returning the 40D and getting a 5D but I realized the price difference was a lot more than I thought (not sure where I got the numbers from, was quite shocked when I saw the prices lol). After realizing it was out of my price range now I felt better about my purchase. Well, that is until I saw that now the 40D was over $100 cheaper! Last night I got up the nerve to email Amazon customer service and ask if they could possibly issue me a credit or if I should just return & re-purchase the item. I was so stoked when I saw an email from them this morning that said they will be issuing me a credit of the difference!

I just discovered their deal of the day too, the only problem is it's just too tempting! lol

I'm off now to go see if DH needs help packing. He needs to be to work at 1:45am and he's just now packing the rest of his things. This is typical for him and something I hate. So, instead of hanging out with the kids for the next 2 hours before they go to bed, he is out sweating in the garage. He could have done this at anytime this week, especially on one of the 3 days he had off, but nope, he waits until the last minute. Gotta love him though. I'll hopefully be catching up online tomorrow, so I might be posting a few times ;) I've got some layouts and other tidbits I want to write about.